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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22435366">glitter and gold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst, Bottom Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Bottom Jaskier | Dandelion, Creature Fic, Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Kidnapping, M/M, Marriage, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rimming, Scars, Siren Jaskier | Dandelion, Sirens, Slow Burn, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Switching, Top Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Top Jaskier | Dandelion, eventually lmao, siren au</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:55:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>70,989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22435366</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Geralt manages to get his life saved by a peculiarly friendly Siren, and as payment agrees to allow the creature to accompany him, unsure as to why Jaskier would want to leave his lake behind, nor why he would choose Geralt to tag along with.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia &amp; Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia &amp; Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion &amp; Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>492</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2879</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hiya folks! I've cautiously set this at ten chapters, as I know where it begins and where it ends and approximately what's going in the middle, so we'll see how it ends up. Hope you enjoy yet another creature!Jaskier fic!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Roach nickers to him from the shoreline, and Geralt raises a hand to her in farewell, before seizing the oars and beginning to row.</p><p>The moon is a silver sliver overhead, the stars a canopy of bright lights, and he doesn’t need to use much of his night vision to see—but the water beneath him is an inky void reflecting the sky back at him, and it sets his teeth on edge.</p><p>The skiff makes steady progress, gliding across the mirror-flat lake gracefully, despite the witcher having little proficiency in rowing: ordinarily when he needs to cross water, he swims the distance or hires passage on a boat to ferry him. He rarely has need of rowing <em>himself</em>. This time, however, he is retrieving something, and he doesn’t know whether he will be able to swim back to shore with it once he has located it; thus: the boat.</p><p>So, to go with his unusual transport: an unusual contract.</p><p>A lord of a small holding believes himself to be the inheritor of a box, filled with unknown yet presumably lovely treasure, that was thrown to the bottom of this lake some few decades ago, and upon his betrothal to the daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants this side of Temeria he has decided he’d like to finally solve the mystery of his inheritance.</p><p>Geralt had originally been dismissive—he’s a <em>monster hunter</em>, for the love of Melitele, and this doesn’t have anything remotely to do with monster hunting, but then the lord named a rather extortionate price for what is essentially a rather easy retrieval, and Geralt had taken it without second thought.</p><p>The lake is still and calm and peaceful.</p><p>There are few tales of monsters in this lake, which is odd, because peasants are a superstitious and excitable lot and this lake is, all things considered… rather creepy. The trees that grace the shoreline are oddly pale and, in the face of autumn, have shed their leaves in favour of bare, bone-white branches. Yesterday when Geralt came down to scout the area the water was blanketed in a thick fog, eery and strangely silent. Wolves prowl the forests nearby.</p><p>Yes; this lake, by all rights, ought have at least one or two local legends of creatures crawling out of the depths and terrorising the villagers nearby, but Geralt had been unable to learn of any myths surrounding the area.</p><p>He makes quick work of rowing to what is approximately the middle of the lake, and takes the free end of the rope, the other end of which is secured firmly to the seat in the middle of the boat.</p><p>He ties it around his ankle, checks that the knot is secure, and dives into the water.</p><p>Geralt quickly finds that the lake is deeper than he initially thought. Below the surface, trailing black foliage wrap slimy limbs around him as he tries to dive further down, brushing against his skin like so many fingers. Any light the moon reflects is lost as the water quickly becomes black before his eyes, and even adjusting his pupils as much as he can to let in as much light as possible, he can barely see his hands in front of him.</p><p>The water is icy cold. He is at the lake bottom now, running his fingers through the silt, when he hears—something.</p><p>Something odd. A blow of bubbles that shouldn’t have been, perhaps, or a scrape of something <em>off </em>against the lake floor, and he whips his head up and strains his ears, trying to listen.</p><p>He needs to find this box.</p><p>He has at least several minutes of air left yet, and isn’t worried about drowning—rather, he doesn’t have his sword with him and he isn’t wearing armour—or clothes, at all. He has a knife he strapped to his thigh in precaution, but he doesn’t know what is out there and thus doesn’t know whether it is enough.</p><p>He goes back to digging.</p><p>There is—he feels something beneath his fingers, and he has almost slid his fingertips around the edge of it, carefully prying it from the dirt, when something grabs the rope that is tied to his leg and <em>yanks</em>.</p><p>There was never a chance for him.</p><p>The creature, he finds, is a kelpie, but in the water it looks less like a horse or a man and more like a <em>serpent</em>, trailing black fins and looking at him through white eyes and baring horribly sharp fangs as it <em>roars </em>at him, and even as Geralt struggles not to heave in a gasp, even as the monster snaps its jaws at him, he is enthralled.</p><p>The creature sings as it screams at him and all he wants to do is reach forward and grab its forelock and crawl aboard, and let it take him where it may.</p><p>But he won’t, because he is a witcher and he isn’t to be taken by the likes of this beast, so he unsheathes his dagger and swipes it, air escaping from his mouth in a furious bellow.</p><p>This proves to be a mistake.</p><p>The kelpie keeps clear of his knife, but instead goes again for the rope, snapping it from its connection to the boat and grabbing it in its mouth. Geralt can’t swim upwards, can’t swim away, and he accepts, here and now, that he is probably going to drown.</p><p>This kelpie is going to kill him. Vesemir would laugh.</p><p>He lunges for the kelpie again, slashing his dagger, but the creature dives beneath him, faster and more graceful than Geralt could ever be in the water, and comes up again behind him, kicking out with one of its leg-fin-limbs and striking him in the lower back.</p><p>He turns, furious, and drives himself at the creature, right into the range of its teeth and claws and hooves and grasping, horrible fingers, and it catches him easily and takes him into its jaws, inches long, serrated teeth dug deep into his torso, and his blood plumes around him in black clouds.</p><p>He still can’t see, and the blood makes the water thick and hot and taste of salted metal, and he <em>can’t see.</em></p><p>His dagger nearly slips from his hand, but he manages to take a better grip of it and plunges it deep into the creature’s eye. The kelpie does not budge.</p><p>He hacks at the beast, slashing and swiping and sawing at the monster’s throat, before he realises that the kelpie is <em>dead</em>, he killed it when he first stuck his blade into the creature’s head, only it has such a tight grip around him that, even in death, they are entwined. Its teeth are sunk in deep and its weight is dragging him down, and Geralt is running out of air.</p><p><em>This is it</em>, he thinks faintly, and the blackness of the water is replaced with blackness of an entirely different nature.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He awakes to hands at his throat and reacts on instinct.</p><p>“Ow! Fuck, what was that for?” a voice exclaims, sounding slightly hoarse from where Geralt has punched him in the throat. There is a tremendous splash. He forces his eyes open and glares at said voice-owner.</p><p>“Oh, you’re <em>pretty</em>,” the man—creature—<em>person</em> says, and Geralt blinks across at him. Strange response to being punched in the throat, but he’s met odder people.</p><p>“What—happened?” he chokes out, his throat raw and his mouth tasting unpleasantly of fish.</p><p>The sky is still black, but the moon casts light enough for Geralt to see whom he is talking to. Pale skin, and black hair, and stunningly blue eyes matching stunningly blue scales that scatter his neck and shoulders places. Gills at his throat, and small fins at his arms where they rest atop the embankment where Geralt has been unceremoniously dropped, and from what Geralt can see there is one long one down his back. A merman—siren, Geralt thinks sourly, resting easily half out of the lake. Tempestuous and stubborn, for the most part, and nearly always impossible to reason with.</p><p>“You and that kelpie were nearly the end of each other. Well, you killed it, but I’ll forgive you because he was a right greedy bastard—always stealing all the fish—and it nearly killed you—would have if I hadn’t grabbed you and brought you to the surface. And then you bled all over me, which, <em>rude</em>, so I fixed you up with a potion from that there pack of yours that smelt like it would do the trick—hope you don’t mind, which you shouldn’t, because I saved your <em>life</em>, but—”</p><p>“Stop,” Geralt interrupts the creature before he can go any further. “Sirens—sirens don’t <em>save </em>people,” he grits out, “they <em>eat them</em>. And you’re meant to have wings. What—why—”</p><p>“Oh, wow, way to encourage stereotypes! Only nixa have wings, thank you very much, and I heard all witchers had <em>fangs</em> and devil’s horns, but—”</p><p>“I had them filed down,” Geralt hisses at the creature, struggling to sit up, and the siren hastens to prevent him.</p><p>“Look—stop, just stop, alright? Your skin hasn’t knitted back together yet and you’re only going to hurt yourself if you try to—”</p><p>“I have to get back to my horse,” he interrupts the siren before he can build up too much momentum.</p><p>“Yes, she’s here, along with all your possessions <em>and</em>, I might add, that box thing you seemed to be diving for which, by the way, if it’s not yours then I can go and put it back—”</p><p>“You got the box?” Geralt manages to rasp out, stopping the siren short.</p><p>“Yes. Why—is it important?” the siren looks suddenly—mischievous, is the only word Geralt can put to it, and he scowls at the creature.</p><p>“I need it,” he answers evasively, causing the creature to look even more intrigued. He tilts his head and flashes sharp fangs at the witcher in a grin.</p><p>“Well, I suppose you can have it—for a price,” the siren tells him. “I’m Jaskier, by the way, if you were wondering—”</p><p>“—I wasn’t—”</p><p>“—and I <em>think </em>I know who you are—oh, fun: white hair, big old loner, two very—very scary looking swords—<em>I know who you are</em>. You’re the witcher, Geralt of Rivia!” The siren—Jaskier—looks so very pleased with himself, and Geralt narrows his eyes at the siren even further.</p><p>Geralt looks about. “Where the fuck are my clothes?”</p><p>“They’re—there, look. I laid them on that rock to dry. You’re <em>welcome</em>,” the siren tells him, his voice oddly musical as Geralt begins to pull on and lace up his breeches. Geralt flinches; sirens sing men and women to their deaths, and he refuses to be murdered by this—glittering, boyish <em>merman</em>.</p><p>The bank he has been dragged on to drops sharply away over the lake, and Jaskier is in the water still, resting his arms on the ledge and his head atop them. He looks—not like most sirens Geralt has encountered, in that he isn’t baring a mouth full of knife-like fangs and his eyes aren’t slitted in fury as they do their best to murder him.</p><p>“How did you learn to talk?” Geralt asks him, his voice a low growl, then immediately regrets it—he wants to get his box and <em>go</em>, not incite more conversation.</p><p>“Oh, well, since you ask—I was, well.” The siren suddenly looks distinctly uncomfortable. “I spent some time among humans, singing songs for them, and I’d listen to them talking and learn their words and their meanings.”</p><p>“What songs did you sing, if you didn’t know human words?” Geralt can’t help himself asking, looking around for his other boot. The rest of his belongings seem to still be in the saddlebags tied onto Roach—they don’t look nor smell to be tampered with—and his boot must be around here somewhere, if Jaskier had brought the rest of his clothes over.</p><p>“They taught me the sounds, before—before I was… presented,” Jaskier hedges, and Geralt wonders what the siren isn’t telling him, in the gaps between his words. “Anyway, I sang their songs and played their instruments and learnt their words, and now here I am.”</p><p>“Bit of an intermission there, siren,” Geralt tells him wryly, and the creature looks affronted.</p><p>“My name is <em>Jaskier</em>, thank you very much, if it doesn’t gall you to maybe <em>use it</em>. And—I saved your <em>life</em>, I don’t owe you anything! In fact, you owe <em>me</em>, if I recall, both for not letting you drown and also for very helpfully retrieving this box for you, <em>witcher</em>, so how about you start being nice to me?” Jaskier tells him haughtily, and Geralt grunts.</p><p>Then the siren is heaving himself out of the lake, and Geralt sees the beginning of his long, cobalt tail before the scales begin to shift and writhe and <em>bubble</em>, and turn into—</p><p>Into legs.</p><p>The siren is now walking. As a man. Geralt is tempted to question this further, but it’s been a strange day all round and he’s seen stranger, frankly. Shapeshifting sirens, then. What else is new?</p><p>He’s a rather naked man, Geralt notes, eyeing his package, but Jaskier doesn’t seem to notice as he retrieves Geralt’s wayward boot from near to where Roach is grazing, and throws it over to him.</p><p>Jaskier meets his gaze squarely and clenches his jaw.</p><p>“I know I’m a monster, but I won’t let you kill me—” and that is the <em>furthest </em>thing from Geralt’s mind right now, so he interrupts the siren to set the record straight.</p><p>“I’m not going to kill you, Jaskier,” he tells him, and the siren’s shoulders slump almost imperceptibly in relief. “I need to get that box back to the lord of the nearby town.”</p><p>“It’s safe,” Jaskier tells him, “and it will remain where it is until I have your word that you will give me what I want.”</p><p>“And what is that?” Geralt asks, warily.</p><p>“I want to come with you.”</p><p>“You—what?” an unusual request for <em>anyone</em>; usually people can’t get away from Geralt fast enough. It’s even more uncommon for them to want to <em>go somewhere </em>with him.</p><p>Jaskier looks determined. “I want to come with you, and not—I just. I don’t have to explain myself to you, witcher.”</p><p>Geralt looks at him. Considers it. And then sighs—he needs this box, and he supposes it won’t be too much of a hardship—the siren will probably come with him to the town, get spooked by the crowds, and return home as fast as his legs (<em>legs?</em>) can carry him.</p><p>“Alright,” Geralt agrees, and Jaskier brightens, like the sun bursting out from the clouds.</p><p>“Great! Great—I’ll, um, just go get my things. And the box.” And then the siren is diving back into the water, shifting gracefully into his streamlined<em> mer</em> form, and Geralt wonders <em>what</em>, precisely, he has gotten himself into.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Music. Ceaseless, fucking, music, is what he has gotten himself into.</p><p>The siren has a lute. <em>Where</em> he got is, Geralt doesn’t know, but he strums it and sings as they walk and it’s driving Geralt just a little bit insane.</p><p>Roach seems to like it, the traitor—her ears flick back continuously to listen to the siren, and she arches her neck and steps out a bit more every time he hits the chorus.</p><p>Maybe she’s sick. Or maybe she ate something funny this morning that’s given her a bit more energy than she usually has. Or maybe she’s in heat and can smell stallions on the air, and it’s making her act less normal. Or maybe it’s the siren’s innate magic—charming sailors and then dragging them to their doom, as the stories go, and Geralt assumes that his magic isn’t working on him because he’s a <em>witcher</em>, and that Roach, as a horse, is more perceptible.</p><p>Probably.</p><p>The siren also <em>talks</em>. A <em>lot</em>. He talks about the court he had apparently sang to, and all of the people he had known, and who was sleeping with whom and gossip that is an indeterminate number of years old, and wonders where the lot of them are and what they are doing now.</p><p>The siren also has, Geralt notices, the peculiar habit of talking ceaselessly without particularly saying anything about himself, and he wonders at it.</p><p>He wonders, too, at this court life Jaskier describes. The way he tells it, it was wonderful and exciting and filled with incredible people—but his shoulders are tense and his eyes are just a little bit wild as he talks, and Geralt is sure that there is more to the story that Jaskier isn’t telling him. Or maybe it’s just that sirens are feral creatures, no matter how <em>human </em>Jaskier seems, and so there will always be a little bit of wildness about him.</p><p>Not that Geralt cares, of course. He’s been strong-armed into bringing the siren along, and the creature’s problems are his own. There’s nothing that Geralt can do about them.</p><p>The forest around them is wild and untamed and occasionally a wolf’s hunting cry will pierce the heady silence that blankets them, and each and every time, rather than shrink back, Jaskier will look alert and curious and, once, as though he is about to sing <em>back—</em>before casting Geralt a furtive look, and choosing to strum a jaunty tune instead.</p><p>Geralt has never spent much time in the company of a siren, and he finds himself… amused, at the creature’s antics.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They camp that night beneath an enormous twisted oak, and Jaskier trails his fingers over the bark with something akin to wonder scrawled on his face.</p><p>“How old do you think this tree is?” he asks of Geralt while the witcher builds their fire, his eyes alight with awe.</p><p>“Don’t know,” Geralt grunts.</p><p>“Ancient, I bet. I wonder what this forest looked like when it was just a sapling. I wonder what the <em>stars </em>looked like when it was just a sapling,” Jaskier continues, and he sits down and tips his head back and stares at the sky with such—<em>emotion</em>, such <em>longing </em>in his gaze, that Geralt almost begins to wonder who the siren is thinking about, before he shakes the thoughts away.</p><p><em>Not friends</em>, he tells himself firmly.</p><p>“Thank you for catching dinner, witcher,” Jaskier says politely as they sit to a dinner of roasted hare.</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p>“Not very talkative, are you? Though you’re a witcher, I suppose you spend more time out in the wilds, like this, talking to—your horse. Not much opportunity to brush up on your social skills,” Jaskier notes, pulling the meat off the hare with his fingers and inspecting it thoroughly before putting it into his mouth and chewing, cautiously. He looks like he doesn’t know what to expect, and his face goes through a myriad of emotions while eating before he apparently decides he likes the taste, and takes another bite.</p><p>“Geralt,” said witcher grunts at him, and Jaskier looks confused. “My <em>name</em>. Call me Geralt,” he tells the siren, and Jaskier looks far more delighted than he really should, having only been given a name.</p><p>“Oh, <em>Geralt</em>, that’s wonderful, <em>Geralt</em>, thank you so much, Geralt—”</p><p>“Don’t overdo it,” he is quick to admonish the siren, but Jaskier only grins sharply at him.</p><p>In his human form, clad in silks and soft boots and a boyish countenance, his teeth are entirely normal, but Geralt remembers what he had looked like with a mouth full of blades. He wonders, idly, why this siren is so different from every other he has encountered.</p><p><em>Not friends</em>, he reminds himself.</p><p>“You should sleep. Long day tomorrow,” he tells Jaskier, who looks suddenly alarmed.</p><p>“There’s no one—I mean, there’s nothing… you’re not expecting anybody, are you? Only my kind have something of a bad reputation, and—”</p><p>“Sleep, siren. I’ll keep watch,” Geralt tells Jaskier before he can spiral further, and he looks somewhat relieved.</p><p>“Good. I’ll—um, just… thank you, Geralt. I’ll…” Jaskier trails off when Geralt doesn’t respond, looking around him instead. Geralt watches him, bemused, as Jaskier apparently comes to some sort of decision—his emotions writ across his face plain as day—and resigns himself to curling up by the fire just as he is, resting his head on the blanket of leaves that cover the forest floor.</p><p>“Here,” Geralt takes pity on him, throwing him a blanket he’d taken from Roach’s saddlebags, and Jaskier looks so <em>grateful </em>that Geralt has to look away from him for a moment.</p><p>The forest is a silent sentinel to them that night, watching over the sleeping siren and the witcher keeping watch.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It had taken Geralt half a day, trotting and cantering Roach, to reach Jaskier’s lake from the town.</p><p>At a walk, with a curious siren by his side taking an interest in anything and everything they come across—including, but not limited to: a rabbit; a collection of butterflies alighting on a thicket of wildflowers, which Jaskier waxes poetic about for <em>ages </em>before Geralt tells him gruffly to knock it off; a yellow flower growing in the middle of a crop of red flowers, which Jaskier insists on very carefully removing, roots and all, and replanting among a copse of buttercups, “so that it doesn’t feel sad because of its differences,” Jaskier tells him serenely; a carving set out in a tree that bears no meaning for Geralt but which Jaskier feels determined to solve.</p><p>It is, by all accounts, not a particularly industrious journey.</p><p>They reach the town late the next evening, so that Geralt is obliged to find a room in a tavern before seeing the lord about his payment. He buys a room with two beds and has their meal sent up, hurrying Jaskier to some privacy before he can reveal himself as anything less than human, and he spends the night preventing the siren from clambering out of the window to go explore the town—instead trying to encourage him to <em>sleep</em>.</p><p>“I’ve never slept in an inn before,” Jaskier tells him excitedly from his side of the room.</p><p>“Hm,” Geralt responds. He is curled under his own blankets, hoping Jaskier will take the hint.</p><p>“It’s all very exciting, isn’t it? Knowing that somebody we’ve never met and probably never will was in here just last night, and that somebody entirely different will be here tomorrow. It’s funny, how humans live so closely together and entirely separately, all at the same time.”</p><p>“Hm,” Geralt agrees.</p><p>“And—”</p><p>“<em>Sleep</em>, Jaskier.”</p><p>Thankfully, <em>thankfully</em>, this seems to get through to the siren, who rustles loudly as he burrows down beneath the covers, and Geralt waits until he hears the siren’s breathing deepen and ease out before allowing himself the same luxury.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Try as he might, Geralt wakes after the siren, though thankfully the creature hasn’t up and decided to go get himself killed trying something stupid.</p><p>“I’m hungry,” Jaskier tells him, and Geralt only sighs before packing their things up and dragging him downstairs.</p><p>“Two hots. And water,” he tells the bleary-eyed girl standing by the bar, and she nods before shuffling into the kitchen. Jaskier and he are among the first up, and Geralt hopes to be gone before the bulk of the patrons make their way down for breakfast.</p><p>“<em>Geralt</em>,” Jaskier whispers, managing to sound rather inconspicuous, once their plates are set down in front of them.</p><p>“Jaskier.”</p><p>“What is this?”</p><p>Geralt pauses. The food is simple fare: eggs, sausage, toast, a jug of water.</p><p>“I—could have phrased that better. I mean…” Jaskier drums his fingers on the table, obviously thinking hard, and Geralt wonders where he picked up such a tic. “Where and what do we do now?”</p><p>Geralt chews, thinking. “We’ll go find the lord, give him his box. Take the coin and be on our way.”</p><p>“And then what?”</p><p>“Then I find another town, another contract, and do it all again.”</p><p>Jaskier doesn’t look satisfied with his explanation. “Surely there’s <em>more</em>,” he presses, and Geralt shakes his head.</p><p>“There’s just this. I’m a witcher, Jaskier. I hunt and kill monsters for a living, and then I move on and do it again, and again.”</p><p>“But what about—about friends? Or family? Don’t you have one?”</p><p>Geralt sets down his fork. “Don’t you?” he growls, and Jaskier looks abashed.</p><p>“Sorry,” he mutters. “I don’t mean to pry, just—”</p><p>“Just <em>nothing</em>. This is it. This is what you wanted to see. <em>Sorry </em>if it isn’t enough for you,” Geralt hisses, and Jaskier hunches down further, and Geralt feels—bad. He feels bad.</p><p>He didn’t mean to snap at the siren. Only, the creature should really have considered what it was he <em>wanted </em>before asking it of Geralt; if he isn’t happy with traipsing around backwater towns, killing monsters for minor lords and living a largely unremarkable life, then he ought go back to his lake while he still can.</p><p>They finish their food in silence, and Jaskier remains quiet by Geralt’s side when he goes and hunts down the lord, and quieter still—silent, in fact, when Geralt hands the box over with a grimace. Everything about him is <em>tense</em>, and he only relaxes minutely once they are out of the lord’s presence.</p><p>Geralt takes the coin, a heavy weight at his hip that will see him through several weeks of hot meals and decent feed for Roach—even with Jaskier apparently tagging along—and doesn’t stay to see what’s in the blasted thing. He finds he doesn’t care either way.</p><p>“Don’t like lords?” Geralt grumbles to the siren as they make their way back to Roach, eyeing everyone who passes them as would-be thieves and mercenaries looking to sell a witcher pelt for a pretty price.</p><p>“Not… particularly,” is the only answer Jaskier gives, and Geralt shrugs and decides he doesn’t care enough to pry.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Nightfall finds them camping again, with Jaskier strumming his lute and composing.</p><p>Geralt has been braced, all this time, for the siren to begin Singing—but he hasn’t. An ordinary voice—as ordinary as Jaskier’s voice can be described, because even Geralt has to begrudgingly admit that his voice is, in fact, rather lovely—accompanies his music, singing of kings and courts and fishmongers’ daughters, and Geralt wonders at it.</p><p>Distantly, of course, in a manner that cannot be confused as <em>growing to like him</em>—oh, no, it is entirely <em>professional curiosity </em>with which he thinks of Jaskier and a siren’s song in his mouth.</p><p>“You like your singing, then,” Geralt cannot help but observe, and the siren breaks off his playing to look at the witcher curiously.</p><p>“Well, yes. It’s what sirens do.”</p><p>Geralt shakes his head. “Sirens sing people to their <em>deaths</em>. You like singing just for—singing,” he finishes awkwardly, under Jaskier’s careful scrutiny.</p><p>“Back home, we’d sing to each other all the time. Usually not human songs, of course, but we’d play games where you started a song and somebody had to jump in and take over, and keep the story the same but sing in an entirely different tune. Or—” he breaks off then, looking horribly maudlin. Enough so that Geralt almost feels the beginnings of <em>sympathy </em>stirring in his gut. He dismisses such twinges as off meat, nothing more.</p><p>“Alright?” he deigns to ask the siren, figuring he might as well.</p><p>“Um. Yes. Just—I miss it. Home, I mean,” the siren explains sadly, throwing his heart out for anybody to catch, and Geralt frowns. Both at the confession, and the easy way Jaskier opens up about some things and not others.</p><p>“Why’d you come with me, then?” he asks, and squints at him.</p><p>“That—the lake, you mean?” at Geralt’s nod, he sighs. “That wasn’t my home. That was just somewhere I could survive, away from humans, after I es—after I left the court,” he corrects himself hastily, and Geralt pretends not to have noticed, filing away the slip for later consideration.</p><p>He finds himself increasingly invested in Jaskier, and he’s inclined, for now, to see where this takes him. There certainly isn’t any harm in it.</p><p>“You should sleep,” Geralt tells him firmly when the siren goes to pick his lute up again. Overhead, a cloud cover has hidden the moon and stars, casting the land in blacker shadow than usual, and morning is still hours away.</p><p>Jaskier looks at him, before apparently conceding—he puts down the instrument and curls up by the fire, and Geralt sighs.</p><p>They need to get the siren a bedroll of his own, if he’s to be staying.</p><p>He grabs a blanket from one of Roach’s bags, and sets himself down on the ground, back to back with the siren, feeling the creature’s clammy coldness seeping through his back. Jaskier naturally runs cold, but seems to prefer the heat, Geralt has noticed, so he lets the siren relax into his warmth as he throws the blanket over the both of them.</p><p>Jaskier falls asleep quickly, but Geralt stays awake for a good long while after, thinking.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jaskier is swimming.</p><p>He and Geralt have travelled to the coast.</p><p>Their arrival triggered a wave of nostalgia—though sifting the old memories <em>hurts</em>, like prodding at a bruise, so he shies away from recalling too much. The beaches, he finds, are whiter and more beautiful than his vague memor, dotted with shells and shards of glittering sea glass and huge drifts of seaweed, washed up from the ocean.</p><p>He’s made his way into the startlingly clear water, Geralt choosing to stay behind and sun himself on the beach. If he looks back, Jaskier can see him there still, a splay of silver hair and pale skin where he’s removed his armour. The string of poppies Jaskier had gifted Roach, who is tied and grazing over the rise upon the grassy banks, out of sight, is a spill of red beside him.</p><p>Jaskier slowly turns over himself again, his fins trailing through the water, webbed fingers carving streams of bubbles.</p><p>He hears the cry of birds overhead and the lapping of the ocean at the beach, and water as he twists and turns through it, and then—</p><p>Far off, he hears… something.</p><p>Something he hasn’t heard in <em>years. </em></p><p>It is a call, a Song—a siren’s cry. He hasn’t seen one of his own kind in so long, not since <em>childhood</em>.</p><p>He isn’t too sure how to proceed; he’s been swimming in lakes and rivers and decorative ponds and hasn’t swum in the ocean in <em>years</em>. Should he go to them? Should he not?</p><p>The Song is too far away for him to discern any words, or even what language they are singing, and he feels it more in his bones and in his heart than as noise in his head. He decides he doesn’t particularly care if he is breaking any social taboos by rushing to greet them; surely they will forgive him, when they learn—</p><p>What happened to him.</p><p>Decision made, he tucks in his arms and twists his tail behind him and he surges forward, breathlessly fast, feeling the rush of water all around him as he speeds towards the noise, chasing the Song.</p><p>He’d forgotten, in all his time spent in cramped lakes and ponds, how <em>freeing </em>the ocean was.</p><p>The Song is growing closer, growing louder, and Jaskier is nearly able to make out the words, he’s sure.</p><p>The shoreline is far behind him now, far out of sight, and he hopes Geralt won’t wake up and wonder where he is. Surely the witcher will forgive him for wanting to greet one of his own kind. Sirens usually aren’t found off of this coast, so he hadn’t thought to speak to Geralt, about what he would do should he find one of his own.</p><p>Above him, the sky is an endless expanse of blue, the sun likely behind him as he swims. He hopes it is still high in the sky, still bright, and that Geralt won’t make him leave the water as it begins to set—he’d like to see sun-gilded <em>waves, </em>real waves, from beneath the surface of the water, as he hasn’t been able to do in years.</p><p>Then, suddenly, the Song is <em>right there,</em> splitting his head open, forcing into his mouth and ears and nose like a gasp of smoke from a campfire, and he spins, disoriented, trying to find the source.</p><p>He looks down.</p><p>There is a <em>creature</em>, larger than life, swimming slowly below him. It is—it is <em>unfathomably </em>big, so much so that Jaskier is not even sure how it can be living—it is easily ten times larger than any whale Jaskier has ever seen, and its Song isn’t in Elder—it isn’t in any language Jaskier has ever known. He hisses, the awful pressure on his head worsening.</p><p>He tries for the surface, breaching, but his head above the water makes no difference to the colossal volume that threatens to gouge out his brain from the inside and spill out through his ears, and he looks down again—</p><p>And the creature is <em>turning</em>. Slowly, oh so slowly, it is spinning on its side, its dorsal fin turning until it is perpendicular to the surface of the water—</p><p>And then it blinks open one enormous eye, and it <em>looks</em> at him, and the eye is horribly, horribly human, with a steel grey iris ringed by icy white, and one enormous, knowing pupil, the kind of black you can lose yourself in—</p><p>And the volume increases beyond what he can stand, beyond anything he has ever heard, beyond anything that can possibly exist—</p><p>Because <em>he knows</em>, somehow, that there is no sun in the sky—</p><p>And the creature’s mouth is gaping open, water being sucked inside, gallons and gallons and <em>gallons </em>of it, and Jaskier feels himself being pulled—</p><p>And pulled—</p><p>And so he turns and he strains and he <em>fights</em> and he then he is towards the beach.</p><p>He <em>has to get out of here</em>.</p><p>Jaskier has never swum so fast in his life, he is sure—he must just be a blur in the water, there one moment and gone the next. He should be feeling a feral, fierce joy a being able to go so fast, so freely, but all he feels is horror.</p><p>He has never been so glad to see the coast as he is when it finally shows on the horizon. He doesn’t stop, though he can’t tell if the noise in his head is ringing in his ears or if that awful creature still has him in its clutches, but it doesn’t matter because suddenly his legs are under him and he’s <em>running, </em>sprinting through soft sand towards Geralt—</p><p>Only once Jaskier reaches his side, he realises the spill red isn’t Roach’s poppies at all—</p><p>It’s <em>blood</em>—</p><p>The witcher’s head caved in under an enormous blow—</p><p>And then Geralt opens his eyes, and Jaskier is looking into the same eyes as the monster—steel grey and <em>chilling</em>—</p><p>And Geralt’s mouth, when he grins at him, is full of knives—</p><p>And Jaskier <em>screams</em>—</p><p>~~~</p><p><em>“Jaskier!” </em>somebody is yelling and shaking him, and it takes him a moment to realise that he is awake, and still screaming.</p><p>Geralt looks at him, blood pouring from his nose, and Jaskier frowns.</p><p>“W—were we attacked?” he croaks out, voice hoarse, tears running down his face, sleep still fogging his mind.</p><p>“No,” Geralt pants. “You were screaming. But—damn it, it was like you were <em>Singing</em>, only there were no words, just—”</p><p>“Just noise,” Jaskier murmurs. He hasn’t done this in <em>years</em>. He thought they’d—he thought he had had it trained out of him. He looks up at Geralt again, <em>really </em>looks at him, inspecting his eyes and watching for any sign, any hint of eldritch colour, but there’s nothing. Just pure gold, and concern.</p><p>“What <em>was that</em>, Jaskier?”</p><p>“An old dream,” he tells Geralt, because it is. The ocean, the beast—the feeling of existential horror that won’t relinquish him for days; the Geralt part is new, although Jaskier isn’t keen to psychoanalyse that part any time soon—and the eyes, most of all.</p><p>After what had been done to him, he will have nightmares of those eyes for the rest of his life, he knows. They will haunt him even after they are long closed in eternal damnation, and he is still swimming free.</p><p>And the creature… he is sure he had heard stories of such things, when he was young, but he doesn’t remember them now. He hopes that’s what it is—just memories, just the bad dreams of a child—and not that he is somehow scrying some terrible beast, lurking beneath the waves, ready to eat him in one enormous bite.</p><p>He is still shaken, and Geralt still looks nonplussed, so he shakes off the last vestiges of sleep and sits up. “What is there to eat?”</p><p>“Here,” Geralt says after some rummaging, holding out sugared biscuits. Jaskier has become rather partial to them.</p><p>“Thank you. And—I am… sorry, about that.” Jaskier ducks his head, embarrassed, when Geralt next looks at him.</p><p>“We’ve all bad dreams. Some are just… significantly less violent than others,” Geralt tells him gruffly, apparently already over the episode, his face pinched in discomfort at the <em>terribly </em>emotional discussion they are having. Somehow, it serves to sooth Jaskier’s rattled nerves further. “Try and sleep. I’ll wake you if it looks like you’re having another nightmare.”</p><p>Jaskier has never, never been able to fall asleep after a nightmare such as that. He’s always too keyed up, too worried of his untrained Singing lashing out and causing irreparable harm, too frightened that he’ll see that <em>thing </em>again.</p><p>But at Geralt’s words, he finishes his biscuit, lays his head back down, and manages to allow sleep to take him.</p><p>~~~</p><p>That’s what Geralt is good at, Jaskier finds, over the next weeks and months.</p><p>He’s good at forgiving. And, though he will deny it until his last breath, he’s good at being kind.</p><p>“You put the coins back. Why did you put the coins back?” Jaskier asks him, once they have left the old widow’s hut.</p><p>“She needed it more than me,” Geralt tells him, his growling rasp at odds with the generosity of his act.</p><p>Jaskier wants to point out that they, too, are very much in need of coin, but he doesn’t think it would go over well. Geralt has just cleared an entire swarm of drowners, free of charge, and Jaskier doesn’t want to push him over it.</p><p>“Where to, now, then?” he asks, choosing a safer topic. “I think you’ve killed pretty much everything around here that’s ever even looked at a person funny.”</p><p>“Posada. Not far away. Good ale,” Geralt grunts, not even deigning to use complete sentences, and Jaskier nods.</p><p>“And work?”</p><p>“And work.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Determined not to be a dead weight, Jaskier begins bringing his lute when they rest at inns and taverns, and he strums and strings words together and entertains guests with both epic tales and raunchy ballads.</p><p>Some of them, Geralt hasn’t heard before, and neither have any of the other patrons, it seems, and he wonders if they are simply not particularly well-known or if they are the siren’s own compositions.</p><p>Between the two of them, they manage to earn coin enough to keep themselves and Roach in feed, and a roof over their heads on nights when the weather is just <em>too </em>miserable.</p><p>In Posada, there are grain thefts, and a Sylvan, and elves, and Jaskier acquires a new lute.</p><p>That’s an abridged version of the tale, and Jaskier is working on a song with which to dazzle the populace, though he hasn’t told Geralt yet.</p><p>“I love her,” he says dreamily, trailing his fingers down her form and allowing them to catch slightly on her strings.</p><p>“Filavandrel was generous indeed,” Geralt says from where he is lighting their fire. “And it’ll make good firewood, in a pinch.</p><p>Jaskier shoots him a filthy look.</p><p>“<em>She</em>, Geralt, don’t be rude. And oh, I will look after her for as long as I live,” Jaskier proclaims, strumming out a simple tune. “She will <em>never </em>be firewood. I’d freeze to death first.”</p><p>He gets a mischievous look in his eyes, and Geralt doesn’t want to know at <em>all </em>what that’s about, so he turns away and ignores the bard he begins trying out new combinations of notes, mouthing to himself as he scribbles down notes in his battered notebook.</p><p>Geralt humours him, though he wouldn’t admit to that either. Sometimes, he’ll look at Jaskier with this—this <em>glint </em>in his eye, and he wonders if Geralt is remembering nearly the first thing Jaskier had said to him, when he’d seen the witcher’s eyes and burst out ‘<em>you’re pretty’</em>, nearly by accident.</p><p>But then the witcher will shake his head, or roll his eyes, and look away, and go back to cleaning his sword or mending a shirt or his armour, and Jaskier wonders if Geralt even remembers, or if he has forgotten.</p><p>He can’t decide which he’d prefer.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Some days, Jaskier looks at Geralt, and the witcher appears to be somewhere very far away, with somebody else entirely.</p><p>It doesn’t happen very often, but Jaskier can tell that Geralt is used to being alone because his face is always so <em>open</em>, so easy to read, and the heartbreak he has suffered is as clear as day.</p><p>He considers asking him about it, sometimes. About who she was, and what she did, and who hurt whom… but then Geralt seems to clear away the fog and he looks at Jaskier, eyes bright, and he decides <em>not today</em>.</p><p>“We’re not friends,” Geralt will tell him, at any opportunity, and it had hurt at first but now Jaskier thinks he just doesn’t want somebody getting close to him again.</p><p>He can understand that. After all he’s been through, he can appreciate keeping one’s secrets, not wanting to dig them out and relive that old pain all over again.</p><p>So he leaves Geralt and his secrets in peace.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It is a bright spring day, and Jaskier is very, <em>very </em>anxious.</p><p>“I’m sure he’s fine.” Roach flickers an ear in agreement, and continues grazing.</p><p>Jaskier shoots her a disgusted look. “How can you be <em>eating</em>?” he demands, rather wretchedly.</p><p>Unfortunately, Roach fails to respond, owing to her equine ancestry and otherwise disregard for the subject.</p><p>Jaskier has already forgotten he is upset with her. “Geralt’s probably dying, isn’t he?” he says grimly to Roach, who ignores him. Possibly she doesn’t understand what he is saying, but with how much Geralt talks to her, he thinks it unlikely. “Or he’s probably already <em>dead</em>.”</p><p>The problem is, in fact, very little to do with Roach and her poor communication skills, and everything to do with Geralt and <em>his </em>poor communication skills. He’s a day late from being back from one of his hunts and he hasn’t told Jaskier what to do in such a situation.</p><p>Jaskier has been three months travelling with the witcher, and Geralt has left him behind every time he went monster killing, owing in large part to Jaskier’s self-described fighting style of ‘hiss and run’.</p><p>He’s <em>really </em>only much assistance when in water, and even then he dislikes it.</p><p>So Geralt has been leaving him with Roach and his other belongings, and Jaskier has learnt to wait as patiently as the mare for her master to return.</p><p>But he’s never been an <em>entire day late</em>.</p><p>And Jaskier just can’t shake the mental image of Geralt lying in a pool of his own blood somewhere, bleeding out, his throat slashed or his chest caved in or his spine snapped in two, unable to get up nor call for help.</p><p>Is he waiting for Jaskier to come to him?</p><p>Jaskier eyes Roach’s saddlebags, where Geralt’s potion bag is stashed.</p><p><em>Even if he isn’t out there dying, surely there won’t be any harm in me just… checking up on him? </em>Jaskier thinks to himself, and before he knows it he is on his feet, striding over to Roach.</p><p><em>But… what if you get in his way, or get him injured, or you ruin his hunt? Imagine what he could do to you, </em>an insidious little voice whispers to him, and he finds himself sitting down abruptly.</p><p>“He <em>isn’t them</em>,” Jaskier breathes, his voice a weak thing under the weight of his memories.</p><p>Then he steels himself. Straightens his spine. He has spent <em>years </em>healing, and he refuses to be caught in their net of despair again.</p><p>He pushes himself to his feet, and takes a deep breath.</p><p>“Time to be brave, Jaskier,” he tells himself with a steady voice and a clear head, and his hands don’t shake when he grabs the potions bag, and sets off.</p><p>~~~</p><p>“Stupid, arrogant, bloody <em>witchers</em>,” Jaskier hisses a litany of curses to himself as he travels though the boggy underbrush of yet <em>another </em>fucking forest.</p><p>Jaskier misses the sea.</p><p>The great open expanse, and swimming with one’s pod, and playing amongst the waves during storms as lightning cracks down overhead. He’d not yet learnt to Sing as a siren does, before <em>everything</em>, but watching his elders call for sailors to come and join them beneath the watery depths had always been a particularly fun game.</p><p>This—struggling though a marshy forest for a grumpy witcher who may or may not even <em>need </em>his help—is <em>not fun</em>.</p><p>Then he smells it.</p><p>Siren’s senses, outside of water, are not particularly anything to speak of. They’re only somewhat stronger than a human’s and his eyes flash white and slitted whenever he <em>really </em>strains them, which is of course no use to him when he’s trying to remain inconspicuous.</p><p>But, here and now, he is as alone as he can possibly be, and the heavy, metallic smell of blood lies thickly on the air, so he casts caution to the wind and inhales as deeply as he can, watching the landscape become an amalgamation of shades of white and grey as his vision shifts to accommodate.</p><p><em>There. </em>Like a hound at a scent, Jaskier is off, following the trail blindly.</p><p>He crashes through the undergrowth, collecting mud and foliage, uncaring of the ruin it is doing to his clothes. The potion bag is gripped firmly in his hand to prevent it from bouncing madly—he doesn’t want to have smashed all the little glass bottles by the time he gets there.</p><p>Geralt, when Jaskier finds him, is sprawled unmoving at the foot of a spindly, wretched looking tree, the stench of death heavy on the air.</p><p>Jaskier’s knees nearly buckle then and there.</p><p><em>Oh</em>, he thinks numbly to himself at a sudden realisation that hits him like a punch to the gut. A smile springs unbidden to his face, before the severity of the situation at hand impresses itself upon him with a weak moan from Geralt.</p><p>“Jas—”</p><p>“Shh, shh, I’m here, you’re safe,” Jaskier hurries to soothe the struggling witcher, and Geralt slumps under Jaskier’s slight grip on his shoulder.</p><p>The death stench, as it turns out, belongs vociferously to a groaning—something, that is collapsed nearby, Geralt’s silver sword sticking out of it. Jaskier chooses not to look to closely.</p><p>“Geralt? I have your potions here. Which do you need?” Jaskier refrains from shaking the witcher to get his attention, not wanting to be punched in the throat again, but Geralt is slipping out of consciousness again and Jaskier doesn’t think they have a lot of time.</p><p>Purely on instinct, he grabs a red vial, one that smells… <em>medicinal</em>, uncorks it, and pours it into the witcher’s slackened mouth. Red means health, he’s sure.</p><p>Geralt swallows the potion down rather than spitting it out or choking on it—always a good sign—but then nothing else happens and Jaskier feels a pit growing in his stomach. He goes to rummage through Geralt’s bag again.</p><p>None of them <em>smell right</em>. Jaskier is getting frantic/</p><p>He decides to risk the loss of a limb, and peels Geralt’s shirt away from his wounds.</p><p>There are three gashes, still bleeding sluggishly—<em>gods, why isn’t he dead yet?</em>—that smell, truth be told, fucking awful. It can’t be infection. The wounds haven’t even closed yet, and besides it doesn’t smell really like <em>infection</em>, more of—</p><p>Jaskier pauses, and goes back to Geralt’s bag.</p><p>He’d seen a tincture, before, meant for the bite of a nasty little serpent who lives exclusively in treetops and has an awful habit of leaving fangs behind when they bite, and then just growing new ones. The tincture draws the teeth out without ejecting the venom stored rather curiously inside them into the wound.</p><p>This isn’t the same creature, not at all, but something in Jaskier’s gut tells him this is sort of the same predicament, and this time when he sniffs it the tincture smells… decidedly more neutral, than off.</p><p>Geralt coughs wetly, and Jaskier scoops a fair amount—probably too much, but better to be safe than sorry, his mother always said—into his hand and slathers it over and <em>into </em>the gashes in Geralt’s side.</p><p>The effect is instantaneous.</p><p>The witcher <em>bellows</em>, the roar a feral and savage thing that speaks sweetly to something dark and instantly curious that lays coiled neatly inside Jaskier. He shushes it away for now.</p><p>Geralt arches his back and emits a strangled moan, his fingers scrabbling uselessly at the dirt beneath him, his wounds <em>bubbling </em>under the salve.</p><p>Jaskier sits back and watches in morbid curiosity as three serrated, broken off shards of talon push their way out of Geralt’s side, covered in blood and some black substance that looks foul and smells fouler.</p><p>The whole things takes perhaps half a minute, and Geralt is slick with perspiration, blood, and muddy slime by the end of it, heaving for breath.</p><p>Jaskier gives him a moment to collect himself.</p><p>Then he’s reaching for the potions bag again, sifting through to find more traditional medical supplies. He takes a clean cloth, drips some cleaning salve over it, and holds it just over Geralt’s side.</p><p>“I need to clean this out before I can stitch it,” he tells the witcher, who bares his teeth around a growl but doesn’t argue.</p><p>“Do it,” he rasps out, and Jaskier’s stomach clenches at the sound.</p><p>He carefully, carefully begins. The blood has stopped flowing as Geralt’s mutations work hard to fix the problem from the inside.</p><p>He frowns, then takes the cleaning salve and pours just a little bit directly <em>into </em>the wound, where it… fizzes, a bit, and Geralt makes a noise like all the air has been punched from him.</p><p>“Sorry—sorry,” Jaskier murmurs to the witcher, picking up the cloth and wiping away more of the muck and the blood and that awful black substance.</p><p>By the time he is done, the gashes no longer looks so frightening, and he has them stitched in barely five minutes, before managing to wrestle bandage around Geralt to keep the wound clean. He wraps it snugly around the witcher’s frame, trying to remain neutral while his hands are all over Geralt’s flushed skin, hoping the witcher is too out of it to smell it on him.</p><p>Then he is done, and looking down at Geralt who looks up at <em>him </em>through pain-lidded eyes.</p><p>“I can—” Jaskier breaks off to cough, suddenly feeling drained as the adrenaline fades, “—I can go get Roach? And bring her here, and we’ll get you on—somehow, and then go find a town with an inn, or something—”</p><p>“I can walk,” Geralt interrupts stubbornly, and will not be dissuaded.</p><p>And he <em>can</em> walk—as long as Jaskier bears rather a lot of his considerable weight, and they take a break every five minutes to catch both of their breaths, and by the time they reach a dozing Roach both of them are <em>covered </em>in filth and Geralt looks to be on the verge of passing out again.</p><p>“Well, that was awful,” Jaskier groans as he half helps, half drops Geralt on the ground, and promptly flops down beside him. Geralt, for his part, stays where he is laid out, the only sign of life about his prone form being the great heaving gasps he draws in.</p><p>“Can you eat? I could eat. <em>Fuck </em>I’m hungry. Do we even have food?” Jaskier contemplates having to hunt and immediately squeezes his eyes shut against the nightmare his thought conjures. He’d rather go hungry.</p><p>“Saddlebags,” Geralt grunts out, and Jaskier takes a long, long moment to brace himself before <em>heaving </em>himself up.</p><p>“Fuck. Fuck, fuck—<em>fuck</em>,” he curses to himself as muscles he didn’t even know he <em>had </em>protest at being forced to move again.</p><p>Inside the saddlebags they have some flatbread, some salted—<em>unidentified</em> meat, possibly pork, some dried fruit and one sad looking apple, which he gives to Roach.</p><p>He splits the rest of the rations between them. They might as well eat it all now and buy more when they go into town to collect the reward for Geralt’s heroics tomorrow. Said witcher eats without much enthusiasm, seemingly forcing himself to chew each mouthful and swallow it down with a wince.</p><p>Jaskier hands over their wineskin and Geralt takes long pulls; thankfully the wine isn’t very strong, as most of the locals drink it around here as opposed to water. Something about well monsters. Jaskier hadn’t particularly been paying attention.</p><p>“My sword,” Geralt grunts then, and Jaskier looks at him in confusion.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“My <em>sword</em>. Silver. Stuck it in the fucking thing. Did you get it back?”</p><p><em>Ah, fuck</em>. “Do you honestly expect me to have been able to carry you <em>and </em>your sword back? Honestly, Geralt, I don’t know <em>how </em>you manage it but you might be the heaviest thing I’ve ever had to lift.”</p><p>“You’re a siren, Jaskier, how many things have you realistically had to lift?”</p><p>“Enough to know you’re <em>fucking heavy</em>,” he snipes back, delighting in the small twitch of Geralt’s lips as he takes his next bite of bread.</p><p>“We’ll get it back tomorrow,” Geralt tells him, all forgiven, and Jaskier realises only then that he’d forgotten to be nervous about the witcher’s reaction to him forgetting the sword.</p><p>It should be alarming, how quickly Geralt has become <em>safe</em>.</p><p>They fall asleep back to back, as they are wont to do, and Jaskier, despite his cool nature, quickly warms beneath the sheet. Geralt is slower to do so; his skin is still clammy and cold when Jaskier’s elbow accidentally brushes against it, so he pretends to be asleep and moulds more of himself against the witcher.</p><p>He falls asleep rather quickly after that.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The lord refrains from asking questions when Geralt and Jaskier show up in his hall the next day, smelling of death and blood and muck and that horrible, awful slick the monster produced, having spent the morning digging through its remains for Geralt’s silver sword. Geralt collects his reward and then they are on their way.</p><p>“I’m going to start singing songs about our adventures,” Jaskier tells him, and Geralt grunts.</p><p>“Are they really o<em>ur </em>adventures?” the witcher points out, and Jaskier feels a righteous anger brewing.</p><p>“Yes, our adventures! You would have <em>died </em>yesterday if I hadn’t dragged you through that horrible forest, or stitched your awful wound together or even cleaned it out for you, so I think I’m quite right to be calling them <em>our </em>adventures, thank you very much—”</p><p>“Alright,” Geralt interrupts him, and Jaskier leans back on his heels, pleased. Geralt is really very easy to manipulate. You just have to annoy him into agreeing with you in the hopes of shutting you up. Jaskier has the technique down to perfection.</p><p>“We should get more food, as well. We ate the rest of it last night.”</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p>“<em>And </em>I want a bath. I know you’re used to going around smelling like the back end of death, but <em>I </em>like to remain clean and slightly more fresh-smelling, thank you very much.”</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p>“Do you think there’s a decent leather worker around here somewhere? I’m going to walk holes into my boots at this rate. Or perhaps I should find a horse for mys—”</p><p>“You? A horse?” Geralt interrupts, and Jaskier looks affronted.</p><p>“What’s wrong with me having a horse?”</p><p>“Can you even <em>ride?</em>”</p><p>“Yes.” Pretty much, anyway. Jaskier wouldn’t call himself a master horseman, but he can direct a horse to where he needs it to go. “And I’m sure it would be much more comfortable than walking all day long, since you never let me up there.”</p><p>“Roach doesn’t like other people.”</p><p>“Sounds like someone else I know,” Jaskier mutters to himself, to Geralt’s silent amusement, and they both of them walk on.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier has been feeling… on edge, for days now.</p><p>He can’t explain it. There was no trigger, nothing that caused it, he only knows that the sky and the forest is too bright and noises are too loud and the grime on his skin feels awful.</p><p>He begs Geralt to find them an inn; he can’t explain why, but something in the witcher’s expression softens when he looks at him. Geralt has been doing that a lot, recently, something in Jaskier’s subconscious notes; the witcher has been lowering his walls, almost against his will, bit by bit.</p><p>“I want a <em>bath</em>,” he tells Geralt—whines, really, rather piteously, hoping it will incite some sympathy.</p><p>“We’ve not the coin for a room.”</p><p>“We would have had the coin, had you not given it to that young girl and her brother.”</p><p>Geralt shoots him a dirty look, and Jaskier feels rather guilty.</p><p>“I’m sorry. You did the right thing—and I’m glad you did it, really. They needed it more than I need a bath. It’s just—” he cuts off, unsure how to put it. Words aren’t coming so easily to him; his brain is moving too quickly.</p><p>“There’s a lake,” Geralt cuts through his turmoil, his face screwed up as he thinks.</p><p>“…Can we go?” Jaskier prompts, when Geralt doesn’t continue.</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Geralt turns Roach’s head right and directs her to the beginning of a different path cutting into the forest, and Jaskier follows, nearly shivering with anticipation.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The lake is a clear blue, the banks overgrown with reeds and flowers and trees that bow over its surface in supplication. Above, the sky is clear and the sun is a pale thing, providing light but little warmth. The smell of the town is far behind them, and where Jaskier has taken his boots off there is soft mud squelching beneath his feet, between his toes. The spring day is cool but the smells of the approaching summer hang heavy in the air.</p><p>And now he suddenly isn’t very sure.</p><p>“Aren’t you coming in?” Geralt asks Jaskier, already bare and scrubbing at himself in the water. The water beside him is murky, mud and blood trailing across the surface of the lake with blackened, stretching fingers, and Jaskier is momentarily distracted by the slices in Geralt’s side, stitched and healing well, before he remembers that Geralt had spoken to him.</p><p>He hesitates. “I think if I went in I’d end up… shifting. Or maybe not, but it wouldn’t be very comfortable if I didn’t, I think. It’s been a while since I got to… stretch my legs—or my not-legs, I guess.” Jaskier winces, realising that he is babbling but seemingly unable to stop himself. “Maybe I’ll just wait—”</p><p>“Wait for what? You’re a siren. You said you wanted a bath. You’ve been <em>shaking, </em>Jaskier. Why won’t you come into the water?” Geralt interrupts him to ask, very reasonably.</p><p>Jaskier sighs. “I just… didn’t know if you were comfortable. With me being… me.”</p><p>Geralt snorts. “Jaskier, I’ve seen you as <em>you </em>already. When you dragged me out of that lake? I’ve seen monsters of every ilk, and some of the worst of them were <em>human</em>. You’re nothing like them,” he says, so dismissively, so <em>easily</em>. “Just get in.”</p><p>And that appears to be that.</p><p><em>He’s safe</em>, Jaskier reminds himself fiercely as he strips down, folding and laying his clothes carefully on top of Roach’s saddle, which rests on the ground against a tree. She, for her part, has chosen to lay down, though she is still somewhat alert as she pricks her ears at something, far off in the trees. She feels safe with Geralt nearby, too.</p><p><em>He’s safe</em>, he thinks, repeating the thought over and over in his mind as he wades into the water. It <em>is </em>nice, he can admit to himself, to feel its silken touch embrace him once more, lifting the dirt and sweat from his skin, cradling him.</p><p>It’s like an itch that cannot be scratched. He had thought he might be able to fight it for longer, but the change happens almost instantaneously, knocking the breath from his lungs.</p><p>He flails, diving beneath the water in a graceless arc, lungs burning because he can’t <em>breathe</em>, his gills not quite in place yet. Webbed fingers propel him wildly forward while his legs bind into a tail, bones melting and shifting together, his skin itching as its sloughs off into nothing, revealing scales and fins that trail behind him like silk.</p><p>Silver-blue eyes snap open, slitted in the water, and he dives.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt watches curiously as the change takes Jaskier. It does not look like a particularly comfortable process.</p><p>He’d watched a werewolf undergo their change once; it had been similarly grotesque. What is curious, though, is that the werewolf had smelt the same—like blood and wet dog and nighttime—regardless of their form; in his human form, Jaskier smells… human.</p><p>Like leather and wildflowers and woodsmoke and sunlight.</p><p>And like this, in his siren form. Jaskier smells of salt and of drowning and of—secrets. Truth be told, he’s hard to pin down, especially surrounded as he is by a lake full of other creatures, but none of his smells are inherently frightening.</p><p>Not to Geralt, anyway. A human might have more to say on the subject.</p><p>Just as he is contemplating this, out on the lake the water breaks and Jaskier surfaces, cutting through the air like a jumping dolphin, his fins streaming behind him and his tail sluicing through the air, glittering beneath that pale sun in a thousand and one shades of blue.</p><p>Geralt is… <em>entranced</em>.</p><p>The siren disappears under the water again and is away, too fast for Geralt to track, and after a pause he goes back to scrubbing at himself again.</p><p>He acquired a new soap while buying supplies. It smells of seaweed and scrubbing salts and it reminds him of Jaskier he hopes that the siren’s apparently delicate nose will take less offence to this soap, and that Jaskier might also possibly help him bathe again.</p><p>Only because it’s so much easier when somebody is assisting you. Geralt doesn’t look to closely at his reasoning.</p><p>The witcher has just dived underwater, sluicing off the remaining suds, when Jaskier returns with a flourish.</p><p>The merman whips past him, his fanged mouth stretched into a grin, and Geralt unthinkingly reaches out and trails a finger down his tail.</p><p>Jaskier shudders and changes, his glamour snapping into place in less time than it takes Geralt to blink.</p><p>They stare at one another beneath the water, their hair a halo about their heads; one black, one silver. Jaskier’s still silver-blue eyes meet Geralt’s golden ones.</p><p>Abruptly he surfaces, and Geralt follows him.</p><p>“You—”</p><p>“I’m—”</p><p>They both stop, neither sure of what to say nor how to handle what just happened. Geralt chooses to ignore it, valiantly casting about for a segue. Thankfully for the both of them, Jaskier is much better at communicating and manages to change the subject.</p><p>“New soap?” is what he apparently decides to go with.</p><p>“Hm,” Geralt replies eloquently. “You need to borrow it?”</p><p>Jaskier simply nods, still looking… shocked, for want of a better word, and Geralt wades out of the water to fetch the cloth wrapped bar before pitching it to the siren.</p><p>“Thank you—this smells <em>nice</em>,” Jaskier murmurs to himself, distracted from thanking Geralt when he catches the scent of the soap and bringing it to his nose to inhale more deeply. The witcher leaves him to it, instead finding a patch of grass to lay down on and dry himself in the weak spring sun.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He must fall asleep, because the next time he wakes, Jaskier has encouraged a fire into starting and there is a wad of clothes on his face, presumably having being thrown there by the siren, thereby waking him up. The sun is lower on the horizon and the sky is beginning to break out in reds and pinks.</p><p>There is fish, roasting over the fire.</p><p>“Get dressed before you freeze,” Jaskier orders him, and Geralt raises a brow.</p><p>“You wouldn’t have let me freeze,” he tells the siren, who rolls his eyes.</p><p>“I might have. You don’t know,” he returns. Geralt’s lips twitch very minutely.</p><p>“I do know. If I die, what would happen to Roach?”</p><p>Jaskier squints over at him. “<em>I’d </em>look after her.”</p><p>“She doesn’t like you.”</p><p>“She does too!” Jaskier looks honestly offended, and Geralt is struggling not to laugh. “I fed her an apple when you were dying, after I’d dragged you for miles and <em>miles </em>through that forest.”</p><p>“It was barely two. And, see, she’s manipulated you into bringing her things in the hopes she’ll befriend you. Outwitted by a horse—for <em>shame</em>,” Geralt mock-shakes his head, and Jaskier’s jaw drops in outrage.</p><p>“I have <em>not </em>been <em>outwitted by a horse</em>. Feeding horses apples has been a staple of horse-human relationships since the first mad bastard who looked at a horse and decided to climb aboard!” Jaskier’s lips twitch toward the end, betraying his amusement, and Geralt cannot help but snort.</p><p>Jaskier looks at him in amazement. “Did you just laugh?”</p><p>“No,” Geralt lies.</p><p>“You did! I heard it! I made the <em>great witcher </em>laugh! See, I <em>knew </em>you liked me—”</p><p>“I don’t.”</p><p>“—and so does Roach, no matter what you say—”</p><p>“How many times has she bitten you?”</p><p>Jaskier chooses to ignore this. “—<em>And </em>I caught and cooked you dinner, and let’s not forget the multiple times I have helped you bathe, Geralt. Face it. Roach likes me, and you and I are friends.”</p><p>Geralt shakes his head. “No. We can’t possibly be. I’m Geralt of Rivia, the Butcher of Blaviken. I don’t have <em>friends</em>.”</p><p>“And I’m a siren, so a fitting friend, I suppose. Besides, you only have an image problem, and I’m working on that. It’s easily fixable.”</p><p>Geralt shoots him a look.</p><p>“It’s been twenty years since Blaviken, and people are <em>still </em>throwing knives at me. How, pray tell, is it fixable?”</p><p>“You need a barker. Someone to sing tales of your exploits and make people see past the worst parts of what you do.”</p><p>“Sing, hm?” Geralt asks, eyeing the siren. He’d sung at a court, Geralt knows, although he knows almost nothing else about Jaskier’s past. “You’ve decided then? To sing of our <em>adventures</em>?”</p><p>“You admitted it! They <em>are </em>our adventures. And, oh, yes. I figure while I’m giving the gift of my voice to patrons of inns and taverns large and small, reputable or no, I may as well also be telling tales of your adventures—Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf!”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“What? You <em>just </em>said you’d let me.”</p><p>“No, I asked if that was what you’d decided. I never agreed to your silly nickname—”</p><p>“It is a <em>perfectly dignified </em>nickname! Wolves are majestic.”</p><p>“Wolves are vermin.”</p><p>“Oh, wow, Geralt, <em>wolves are not vermin</em>. <em>You </em>are not vermin. That’s just—”</p><p>“I didn’t say <em>I </em>was vermin, I said wolves are vermin.”</p><p>“How can you say that! Wolves are incredible. Have you never seen one?”</p><p>“More often than you have, I’d wager. How are you meant to stand up before a court and sing about a witcher, a <em>white wolf</em>, and take yourself seriously?”</p><p>“First of all, I’ve never taken myself seriously, ever, and remember that. Second of all, I won’t be singing in courts.”</p><p>Geralt looks at Jaskier curiously. “Whyever not?”</p><p>“None of your business,” the siren replies almost shortly. “I just won’t be.”</p><p>“Surely you’d have wider audience, with—”</p><p>“I said I wouldn’t, Geralt,” Jaskier cuts him off, speaking with a heavy finality.</p><p>Geralt, of course, ignores this. “Didn’t you sing at a court?”</p><p>Jaskier… shuts down, for lack of a better word. The lights die in his eyes and he suddenly looks very far away.</p><p>“Jaskier?” Is the siren broken? This hasn’t happened before. Jaskier has even spoken of his time at court before. Albeit missing out a lot of details, but it isn’t like he won’t ever hear of it.</p><p>Although the siren has been… more on edge, he thinks generously, these past few days. And the incident in the water had seemed to rattle him.</p><p>“…Jaskier?” he tries again.</p><p>No reply.</p><p>What the fuck is he supposed to do? Does he—try to <em>wake </em>Jaskier? The siren isn’t asleep, but he doesn’t look exactly… conscious, either. Fuck it. He reaches forward, around the fire, and puts his hand on Jaskier’s knee—</p><p>And instantly there are three inch talons slicing at it, and Jaskier is up and by the water’s edge before Geralt can even blink, breathing hard.</p><p>Geralt turns, but otherwise stays on the ground. Contact didn’t go so well before; he’ll try a different approach. His hand throbs as it begins to heal.</p><p>“Jaskier.”</p><p>The siren’s silver-blue eyes turn into mirrored disks with the fading light, the flames from their fire reflecting off of them, and Geralt waits him out.</p><p>Some horrible little voice in his head asks him why he <em>cares</em>, why he doesn’t just leave the siren to whatever the fuck he’s going through. It’s the same little voice he’d clung to, during his witcher training—the same one that had told him, for so many years, that he’s better off alone. It’s the same one that drove him and Yennefer apart, though she’d told him, the last time, that he should call on her if he needed her, and it had felt very final.</p><p>It’s the same voice he’s spent years and <em>years </em>trying to silence, so he takes the opportunity now to roundly tell it to <em>fuck off</em>, before he settles in to wait.</p><p>Eventually, Jaskier blinks, and the eye-shine goes away and he looks suddenly very forlorn.</p><p>“<em>Jaskier</em>,” Geralt entreats, and the siren blinks a dazed look out of his eyes, before realisation dawns on his face, and he looks down, furtive.</p><p>“Geralt,” he says in a very small voice, and then, “…your hand.”</p><p>The bleeding has already stopped, and Geralt pays it no mind. “It’s alright. Are you?”</p><p>Geralt is not very good at emotions. Jaskier just blinks at him.</p><p>“I mean… you don’t have to talk about it,” the witcher struggles, “but… you can, if you like.”</p><p>“Goodness. Don’t hurt yourself, Geralt,” Jaskier attempts to tease, his voice tight and his expression pinched and his whole body language screaming discomfort, smelling horribly of fear.</p><p>Geralt hadn’t noticed before. He doesn’t know how he missed it. Everybody else <em>reeks </em>of fear when they are around him, except for Jaskier. Until now, that is.</p><p>“I do my best,” he returns evenly, still holding Jaskier’s gaze, before turning back to the fire.</p><p>Thankfully the fish haven’t burnt, if they are perhaps a little overcooked, so he takes both off the fire and lays one on the back of Roach’s saddle bag, keeping the other for himself.</p><p>He begins eating, straining his ears for signs that Jaskier is coming—and there, footsteps. He pays the siren no mind as he takes a seat opposite Geralt and picks up his own fish.</p><p>“…Sorry,” Jaskier offers after a short silence, both of them eating, but Geralt shakes his head.</p><p>“Don’t be sorry,” is all he says.</p><p>He takes another bite of his fish rather than make a further fool of himself, but Jaskier seemed to appreciate it—his expression has cleared, at least, when Geralt chances a look directly at the siren.</p><p>They finish their fish in companionable silence.</p><p>“You’re a good friend, Geralt,” Jaskier tells him suddenly, and Geralt doesn’t—doesn’t say anything at all, but it seems to be enough for Jaskier.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I can’t believe you’ve just done that.”</p><p>Geralt grunts, but doesn’t say anything.</p><p>“Honestly, Geralt, <em>how </em>people still find you frightening—”</p><p>Geralt <em>growls</em>, a low, menacing thing that rolls and rumbles from deep in his chest, which Jaskier blissfully talks over.</p><p>“—is honestly amazing to me. You’re—”</p><p>“Can you shut up and help?”</p><p>“<em>—stuck!”</em></p><p>The two companions stare at one another, Geralt looking murderous and Jaskier looking <em>delighted</em>.</p><p>Geralt relents first. “…Please.”</p><p>Jaskier grins, and bends forward to inspect the snare. It is a nasty looking thing, all metal teeth and bloodied springs, cutting deep into Geralt’s leg, and he thinks it will need to be forced open, which he very much does not have the physical strength for.</p><p>“It needs to be pried open,” he tells Geralt, a bit more sober, and the witcher sighs.</p><p>“Of course it does. See if there’s a branch about that you can use.”</p><p>They’re in a cave, so there won’t be, but Jaskier has a look all the same.</p><p>They’d been in Redania, crossing over a nameless river in a nameless piece of land, when a troll had crawled from under it and demanded a toll.</p><p>Geralt, to Jaskier’s surprise, had sheathed his swords and asked how much.</p><p>The troll squinted at him. “Witcher?” it grunted, questioningly.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“There’s a cave, a mile or so thataway. Used to be mine, till a monster chased me out. Kill it, and I’ll waive your toll. Might be some coin in it too if you bring me the amulet.”</p><p>“Amulet?”</p><p>“You’ll know the one.”</p><p>And so they’d gone, Jaskier complaining of what a terrible idea this all is and Geralt shushing him. It’s a contract, he’ll complete it—no matter who it’s from. Besides, the troll keeps a steep toll and he’d rather not pay it if he can help it.</p><p>So they’re in the cave, and it’s dark and damp and smells awful, and there’s a monster in here somewhere and Geralt’s stuck in a trap—likely laid down for said monster—and now Jaskier has to try to get the witcher free before both of them get eaten.</p><p>One might say he’s seen better days.</p><p>He’s creeping through the warren of rooms, listening intensely, when he hears a… a scuttling. It’s a scuttling. It stands the hairs on the back of his head on end and puts his teeth on edge and he whirls, grabbing the first thing his fingers touch when he grasps blindly to his right, to where the wall is—</p><p>Nothing is standing behind him, but he <em>did </em>manage to grab a spear-shaft, which he can use to potentially pry Geralt free from the trap.</p><p>He nearly gets lost <em>twice </em>while returning to the witcher, listening as he is for more of that scuttling, and Geralt is grumpy by the time he’s back.</p><p>“Took your time,” the witcher mutters ungratefully.</p><p>“I could just leave you here,” Jaskier tells him.</p><p>“You wouldn’t.”</p><p>“No, but I <em>could</em>.” He has shoved the length of wood between the thing’s teeth and begun, painfully slowly, to lever it down, when he hears the scuttling again, behind him—and Geralt does too, lifting his head as a dog pricks its ears, his pupils blowing wide in the dark as he tries to see through the shadows.</p><p>Jaskier pays it no mind. He can’t fight it off anyway, and he likely can’t run, not through its own territory where he can barely see, and he can’t leave Geralt. He <em>has </em>to get him free, or they’re both fucked.</p><p>His skin crawls as the minutes drag by, the metal inching open wider and wider. Jaskier has thrown all of his weight against it but it still opens oh so slowly. Blood has begun to seep down Geralt’s leg.</p><p>Then he hears a clanging, and it takes all the self-control he possesses not to whimper, to remain as quiet as he can and concentrate on his task—</p><p>And then Geralt mutters, very softly, “<em>oh</em>,” and Jaskier’s knee slips off the lever and nearly gelds himself as he lands heavily on it. Thankfully it only hits his upper thigh, and it manages to crank open that last inch that Geralt might pull his leg out, and as soon as both of them are free Jaskier slips to the floor and the snare <em>snaps </em>shut—</p><p>And Jaskier whips around, ready to face the scuttling <em>nightmare </em>that could run a troll out of its den.</p><p>It’s a spider.</p><p>Admittedly, it’s the size of a large dog—not just a large dog, he thinks sourly, as it creeps uncertainly into the light of Geralt’s torch, but a <em>wolf</em>, and it’s pure white—</p><p>And the absurdity of it as it flails its front legs at them forces a laugh out of him. It’s one of those laughs that takes you by surprise, and ugly, braying snort that comes right from your belly and makes you flush with embarrassment when everybody looks to you in amazement—<em>did you make that noise? </em>And he claps a hand over his mouth to silence himself.</p><p>Then he hears a rumble next to him, one he has heard only a few times and recognises as Geralt <em>laughing</em>, and that’s it. He’s off. He couldn’t stop himself if he tried.</p><p>He sinks to the floor, clutching his stomach, hysteria turning his knees to jelly and his head swims somewhat as all the stress and the fear from the moment they stepped into this wretched place suddenly lifts.</p><p>Geralt, across from him, turns and leans against the wall himself, tucking his chin to his chest as he tries to control his own snorts of laughter. They are few, and quiet, and most would recognise them as rasping growls rather than <em>laughter</em>, but Jaskier sees the grin that transforms the witcher’s face and the sparkle in his eyes.</p><p>“It’s—just a fucking <em>spider</em>,” he manages to gasp out, the absurdity forcing fresh rolls of laughter out of him all over again.</p><p>“My medallion didn’t even tremble,” Geralt notes, his mouth twisted in a half grin—practically a beaming smile, for him.</p><p>“The arachnophobic troll,” Jaskier muses once he can string words together. “Oh, what a ballad that would make.”</p><p>“Would you include our part in the story?” Geralt asks him, still faintly smiling, and Jaskier is struck with how <em>beautiful </em>the witcher is, in this moment. He’s speechless. “Jaskier?”</p><p>He shakes himself, then offers a grin. “What, about the witcher who, while ranting about a troll’s bridge toll, manages to stick his foot into a bear trap?”</p><p>Geralt scowls. “He didn’t even tell me what kind of monster it was. It’s<em> robbery</em>, is what it is.”</p><p>“You could <em>easily </em>have taken the troll,” Jaskier points out.</p><p>“I could have. But then who would have repaired the bridge? Trolls are the backbone of bridge infrastructure on this blasted Continent,” Geralt grouses, and Jaskier gets the sense that Geralt has had this argument before, with someone else.</p><p>“Anyway,” Jaskier says, “I don’t think I’ll sing about you nearly getting your leg chopped off by a bear trap, because then everywhere we go people will be putting bear traps down, thinking to catch themselves a witcher.”</p><p>“It won’t happen again,” Geralt promises with a grimace. “My leg is in fucking agony.”</p><p>Jaskier only chuckles. “Let’s get going, then. I’ll find that amulet, you hobble to the doorway and I’ll meet you there.” Geralt throws him another glare, but does as bid while Jaskier sets about trying to find the amulet.</p><p>Before long, they have Geralt settled atop Roach, his leg staunched and poulticed and bound, and they are heading back toward the bridge.</p><p>The trolls greets them eagerly. “Well?” it asks when they draw near. “Did you kill it?”</p><p>Jaskier and Geralt look at each other.</p><p>“Yes,” Jaskier tells the troll. “Such a nasty vampire. We had a bit of help from your pet spider—<em>lovely </em>creature. Here’s your amulet. Come on, Geralt!” he steps onto the bridge with all the confidence of somebody who has just gone face to face with a vampire, Roach following after barely a moment’s hesitation, and the troll watches them leave with a stony expression.</p><p>“That was dangerous,” Geralt tells Jaskier when they are out of earshot, well away from the bridge. “That troll could have thrown you off the bridge without any effort, and I’d have been hard-pressed to get there in time.”</p><p>“Yes, well, I live for danger,” Jaskier says dismissively. “And he wouldn’t have. He’s probably wondering where the vampire came from.”</p><p>“When he returns to the cave and finds no evidence of a vampire being there, what do you think he’ll do?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” says Jaskier. “I’ll make it up in a song.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier’s songs are accruing renown. The first time somebody buys Geralt an ale, he grimaces down at it, expecting it to be poisoned, or spat in, or both.</p><p>“Thank you, friend!” Jaskier exclaims to their patron, raising his own glass in a toast and smiling widely. “Don’t mind my friend; he burnt his tongue in a flaming argument with a prostitute earlier, and he’s still sore over it.”</p><p>There is a roar of laughter, and another ale is slid in front of them both, and then Jaskier is strumming his lute and singing about a fishmonger’s daughter, and by the time Geralt is quite drunk and the barmaid is kicking out patrons so she can close up, Jaskier has a coinpurse full of silvers and he and Geralt stumble up to their room together, still humming drunkenly.</p><p>“I am <em>never drinking again</em>,” Jaskier moans into his pillow the next morning.</p><p>“You say this every time,” Geralt tells him unsympathetically. For his part, Geralt has been awake for <em>two hours now </em>and cleaning his swords, mending seams in his clothes that have desperately wanted attention for a week now, and going through his potions.</p><p>“I want a bath.”</p><p>“I had hot water sent up with some of the coin you earnt last night—”</p><p>“Oh, it’ll be <em>cold </em>now—”</p><p>“about twenty minutes ago. Bath should be full by now.”</p><p>Jaskier is very effectively shut up.</p><p>“Geralt,” he manages, and the witcher grunts. “You—you are an <em>angel</em>. A saint. The godliest, holiest planet on this godforsaken world of monsters and cruelty. If I ever hear anybody say anything bad about you ever again I will <em>hit them with my lute</em>.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t,” Geralt says with absolute certainty, “because that lute is worth more to you than your own life.”</p><p>“Just take the fucking compliment, witcher,” Jaskier tells him serenely, at complete odds with the graceless way he crawls out of bed and into the adjacent bathing room. Geralt smiles to himself.</p><p>“Geralt!” the siren calls after a moment. He gives it a moment, then responds.</p><p>“What.”</p><p>“Forgot the soap. Can you bring it?”</p><p>Geralt puts down his potions box—he was really only counting how many needles he has left, anyway, which doesn’t particularly matter because he buys more any chance he gets, because <em>somehow </em>they always go missing every time he needs one. Grabbing the soap, and his armour—might as well get some repairs done—he brings it through to Jaskier.</p><p>Who is sprawled out blissfully in the tub, no sight of gills nor scales nor webbed fingers anywhere, and, oh.</p><p><em>Oh</em>.</p><p>He nearly fumbles the soap when he hands it to Jaskier, and thankfully the bard doesn’t notice, instead talking about something or other that Geralt doesn’t hear, instead looking at miles and miles of <em>skin</em>.</p><p>This is… unexpected.</p><p>He takes a seat on the floor by the wall, resting his head against it, listening to the siren talk still. Last time Geralt bathed Jaskier had stayed in the room with him, writing poetry and talking aloud to himself, so Geralt cannot imagine the siren will kick him out.</p><p>He starts carefully thumbing the seams, checking for loose and broken stitches, noting where the thread is fraying. None of it needs reinforcing yet, but he’ll be mindful of the weakened places next time he fights.</p><p>“You know,” Jaskier starts, and Geralt can only brace himself. Five months now, they have been travelling together, and Jaskier only uses that voice when he <em>really </em>wants something he knows Geralt won’t like.</p><p>“What.”</p><p>“There’s a wedding, in Vizima. I’ve been invited to attend. As a bard.” Jaskier pauses, and Geralt gives him a moment to continue—but he doesn’t, and the witcher frowns.</p><p>“Will you go?” Geralt asks him, and Jaskier hunches over a little bit and starts scrubbing at one arm harder than he likely should be.</p><p>“I’m—will you go with me?” the siren blurts, and Geralt raises his brows. “I just—I know you’re probably busy, and this is the kind of thing you’d rather miss and go on a hunt instead and then we’d meet up after a few days—only I really don’t want to go alone and I was kind of hoping you’d—well, you’d watch my back and just—”</p><p>“I’ll go,” Geralt interrupts him, waiting for the siren to catch his breath before continuing. “It’s not my thing, but I’ll—I’ll watch your back, I guess,” he says, though he isn’t entirely sure what he’ll be protecting Jaskier <em>from</em>.</p><p>Jaskier relaxes minutely, but he still looks horribly uncomfortable.</p><p>“Are you… alright?” Geralt asks him, rather awkwardly, and Jaskier manages the smallest of smiles.</p><p>“I—it’s complicated. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you very much—I <em>can’t</em>—”</p><p>“And you don’t have to,” Geralt hastens to tell him, seeing the panic fade from Jaskier’s eyes as the siren nods at his words. “You don’t have to tell me. Unless it’s likely to get me killed, and few things are. We’ll go to Vizima.”</p><p>Jaskier sighs, looking deeply unhappy, but Geralt isn’t sure what he can do, so he goes back to inspecting his shoulder pieces and tries instead to concentrate on the jaunty little tunes Jaskier begins then to sing to himself, under his breath.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The party is worse than Geralt had imagined it would be.</p><p>People keep calling for him. They know him by <em>name</em>. They call him ‘White Wolf’ rather than<em> butcher</em>, and clap him on the back as though he and they are friends, and buy him ale when he forces his face into the approximation of a smile.</p><p>Jaskier seems to be having a far worse time.</p><p>He’d shrunk, somehow, upon entering the room; his shoulders had fallen in on themselves and he’d ducked his head, and Geralt is contemplating going over there and making his excuses and pulling the siren out of his misery when somebody calls for music, for the bard.</p><p>Jaskier seems to brighten.</p><p>How much of it is an act, Geralt can’t be sure, but the siren seems to be doing just fine as he springs into action, lute brandished, a merry tune at his fingertips and raunchy lyrics to accompany at his lips, and he seems to sink into the atmosphere as the partygoers clap and cheer him on.</p><p>Jaskier <em>relaxes</em>.</p><p>Geralt hadn’t truly been able to tell just how tightly wound the siren had been before, apparently, until he straightens his shoulders and shakes his hips and tosses his head, carelessly winking at whomever catches his eye, and Geralt is enthralled.</p><p>Jaskier, like this, is <em>breathtaking</em>.</p><p>~~~</p><p><em>This is a horrible idea</em>, Jaskier thinks immediately upon arrival.</p><p>It is too much like—like that court; there are no chains here, but he feels them about his wrists, about his neck, all the same. His lute is a leaden weight in his hands while he waits for the ground to swallow him whole.</p><p>The guests, for one thing, swan about like peacocks, ruffling their feathers at anybody who cares to glance their way; showing off their bright, elegantly cut clothes and their beautiful jewels and casually slipping their business ventures into conversation.</p><p>The women flash each other sly smiles, allowing their eyes to drag over each other’s makeup, their jewels, their clothes, in envy, while somehow managing to make it look disdainful and nearly pitying, in some cases.</p><p>The men roar like beasts, arguing and arguing and <em>arguing </em>about who could best whom in a fight; who is worth the most in terms of land and men and livestock; who has the prettiest daughters and the strongest, cleverest sons—</p><p>It is enough to make him <em>sick</em>.</p><p>Jaskier is nearly glad for—for his training. For the hours and days and weeks learning how to suppress himself, to stamp down his nature—but never to hone his powers, nor to control them. Only to lock them away.</p><p>He is called upon to sing and the vile taste of saltwater and seaweed and drowning, screaming men comes forth immediately to his lips, and he has to choke it down, force it back, before he can begin.</p><p>He plasters a smile on his face and sets his shoulder back and he <em>sings</em>, and the curious eyes laid on him are for his voice, his talent, not the exotic, alluring features of a siren, and he feels himself beginning to relax.</p><p>Almost.</p><p>He finds himself gravitating around Geralt; never beside the witcher, never singing <em>to </em>him or drawing the attention upon him—this is a wedding, after all; he’s here for the bride and groom—but always within sight. Always close enough that the witcher can intervene, can protect him, if need be. Always close enough that Geralt’s eyes are upon him, drawn to something in him as Jaskier is drawn to something within Geralt, and he feels a thrill he has not felt in <em>years </em>under the attention.</p><p>He sings, and strums his lute, and dances.</p><p>After a lifetime, perhaps, or only an hour or so, the party progresses from the large, stately ballroom that so sets Jaskier’s teeth on edge, where hours before the happy couple had said their vows and tied their knots, to outside.</p><p>The gardens are exquisite. There are no other words for it. The flowers in bloom are shorn to perfection, a veritable rainbow of colours ringing the grounds where they are to dance; stately trees sway overhead to the beat of a distant wind, trailing blossoms; the groundskeepers here must have been cultivating the scenery for decades, to have achieved this.</p><p>There are fountains, too, filled with clear waters and spraying water from mermaids and dolphins and whales, and Jaskier carefully does not look at them. He strikes up a lively jig, turns his back to them, and forgets that he ever saw them at all.</p><p>Geralt seems almost to blend into the shadows. He turns down every maiden brazen enough to ask him for a dance, sipping instead from crystal glasses of the finest wine Jaskier has ever tasted, eyeing anybody who approaches the siren with poorly-concealed disdain.</p><p>The parents of the couple deign to grace the party with their presence, greeting both guests they have never met before and guests they have known for decades like they are old friends. They shower Jaskier with compliments, expressing how enamoured they had been with tales told to them of him from friends he had made while singing in inns and taverns, and how they simply <em>had </em>to have him sing at their son- and daughter’s weddings; they promise to tell of him to others within their circle, to spread tales of such an incredible musician.</p><p>It fills him with both joy and horror and dread.</p><p>He smiles, and thanks them, and plays some more traditional ballad that many of the partygoers know the words to, piling onto the grounds set aside for the dance and bringing their friends and their lovers, laughing, and falling into the familiar steps like birds of a flock, flying together in perfect symphony.</p><p>It is a world he has only ever seen from the outside. A world he was once a part of—as a <em>pet</em>, an amusement, something to gawk at and never on their level. Never their equal.</p><p>A world that, it seems, eventually catches up with you; he has let the music fade so he might find a drink to wet his throat, when a hand latches onto his shoulder and spins him into some dark corner beneath a sentinel tree, concealing him.</p><p>“<em>Julian</em>.”</p><p>He freezes. He hasn’t heard that name since he cast it off, like a bad memory, so many years ago.</p><p>This face—he knows this face. So alike the one he had once loved. A brother.</p><p>“Casmir,” Jaskier greets, his voice so much steadier than he’d thought it would be. “It’s been years.”</p><p>“You have to go, Julian,” Casmir tells him, his face drawn in a worried frown. <em>He hasn’t changed a bit</em>, Jaskier thinks wildly to himself. But of course—Casmir was the younger brother; he has simply grown into his older brother’s looks, the looks of one Jaskier had once loved.</p><p>He shakes off the burgeoning memories that are threatening to overwhelm him. <em>Not now</em>, he thinks fiercely to himself.</p><p>“Why? What is this, Casmir? Why are you <em>here?”</em></p><p>“I’m a guest—we all are,” Casmir tells him, and Jaskier’s stomach <em>drops</em>.</p><p>“Who is <em>we?</em>” he hisses, wrenching from Casmir’s grasp. The man’s dark eyes, so dark they are almost black, so much darker than Dawid’s—the only difference Jaskier can discern—who had held the sun in his hands and lit Jaskier with it—follow him with concern, but he makes no attempt to grab for Jaskier again. He thinks desperately of Geralt, wondering where the witcher has gone.</p><p>“All of us. Mother, and my sisters, and the cousins. But—Jaskier, Dawid—Dawid is d—<em>dead</em>,” Casmir chokes out, eyes filling, and <em>there</em>—now he looks like the younger brother whom Jaskier remembers, his face suddenly stark with youth and Jaskier almost feels bad for him. Almost.</p><p>He ignores his own heart breaking. He had left Dawid years ago, when he’d left the court behind, and had thought that with it he had left any attachment to the man behind—but when Jaskier falls in love, he falls with every bit of him, and when he falls out of love again he is never quite the same. Never quite whole.</p><p>Casmir’s family—Dawid’s family—had never seemed to approve of Jaskier’s treatment at the hands of the lord’s who’d held him, had showcased him. He still wouldn’t like to meet them again. The memories of pain, and blood, and forcing a fixed smile to his face while he strums his lute with broken fingers and sings through a bloodied throat, seeing their faces smiling at him, are almost too much to bear.</p><p>“You need to go, Julian. None of the others recognised you—you look… rather different, like this—” Jaskier flinches, and Casmir pretends he didn’t see, saving them both the awkwardness of him trying to comfort him, “—but they will. I recognised your voice, first. They will too, after all the time we spent listening to you singing.”</p><p>There is silence, then, while Jaskier looks carefully at Casmir and the other man shifts uncomfortably under his gaze.</p><p>“Why are you helping me?” he asks, then. “You needn’t have. You could have let me stay, let your mother find out who I am—let everything that might happen, happen.”</p><p>Casmir meets his gaze properly. Jaskier is suddenly struck by the years that have passed since he last saw this man—eight, he thinks, though it could be ten or twelve—and how the gangly teenager, all limbs and nervous tics, has grown into an exact image of Dawid; how he somehow manages to look young and old all at the same time.</p><p>“My brother loved you,” he says plainly, and Jaskier hides a shiver. “He loved you, and he couldn’t help you. None of us could. But I can help you now.” Then he turns, putting his back to the siren, and Jaskier for one single, cold second, considers overpowering him—considers hiding his secret, then turning and running, abandoning Geralt, because if he did this then the witcher would come after him—</p><p>But he can’t, and he won’t. It isn’t him. It’ll never be him. That court had nearly broken him, nearly turned him into something he wasn’t, and he won’t, he <em>can’t </em>let it win—not after everything he did, everything that had happened, all the things he had lost, in escaping it.</p><p>He takes Casmir’s gift.</p><p>He spies Geralt disappearing beneath an archway, beyond the reach of the lights—for night has fallen, now, though the guests are still boisterous beneath the light of the moon and the stars and the firelights set up.</p><p>Cautiously, he tries to pick his way across the garden, ignoring calls for another song as best he can and answering those he can’t with vague answers about seeing to nature’s call.</p><p>A shadow falls across his path. A scent, of lilies and leather and blood, causing his head to grow suddenly dizzy and the world to spin around him, and he takes an instinctive step back, into a solid chest and arms that come up around him, steadying him, trapping him.</p><p>“Roksana,” he greets Dawid’s mother, a stern-faced, sharp older woman who sniffs at him.</p><p>“Julian,” the voice from behind him greets pleasantly—Kazimierz; it must be. He relaxed in the hold as much as he can, drawing on every bit of self-restraint he has ever learnt to do so. It feels like grabbing a blade in your fist and squeezing.</p><p>“What are you doing here tonight?” Roksana asks him; everything about her stance, her tone, her countenance, screams that she’d rather be anywhere other than here, talking to him.</p><p><em>Just go! </em>He wants to scream at her, but that would admit to her having power over him. That she could ruin his life in half a heartbeat, with no effort on her part, and he’d be back <em>there</em>—</p><p>He breathes.</p><p>“Singing,” he smiles pleasantly at her. “The bride’s parents had somebody contact me and offer the contract. I’m here with the witcher, Geralt of Rivia.”</p><p>Roksana does not so much as blink at the mention of such a legendary character, and his heart sinks. She already knows, then.</p><p>“Yes,” she tells him. “Emilia managed to approach him about a nest of vampires that have been causing quite an upset on the borders of our lands for some time now. Dreadful business.”</p><p>She says it so simply, so <em>coldly</em>, that it takes him a moment to parse what she is saying.</p><p>There’ll be no backup, then.</p><p>He has to get out of this one himself.</p><p><em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>“Well, I should probably be going—he’ll be wondering where I am—” he tries, testing his weight against the firm grip on his shoulders—Kazimierz holds him tighter, and Jaskier goes nowhere, and Roksana decides to grace him with a graceless, wan smile.</p><p>“Ah, but we have only just become reacquainted! Julian, it would be remiss of me not to ask after where you have been all these years. Especially with your… limitations.”</p><p><em>The fins, you mean</em>, he thinks snidely to himself, but doesn’t voice it. Rudeness will only earn her ire, which he very much does not want. He wants <em>away</em>.</p><p>“I’ve been travelling,” he says blandly. “At first I was alone, until I met Geralt, and we’ve been travelling together since.”</p><p>“And this witcher,” Kazimierz says from behind, his voice low and suggestive, “what have <em>you </em>to offer him, that he keeps you around?”</p><p>Jaskier’s body goes hot, and then cold, and then he has to clench his fists to keep from lashing out from the sheer <em>fury </em>that is coursing through him right now. <em>How dare he</em>.</p><p>“Enough, Kaz,” says a woman’s voice from behind Jaskier; Jadzia, he thinks—Emilia’s twin, and Dawid’s sister. Or perhaps it is Maryla, Kazimierz’ sister and Roksana’s niece—Dawid’s cousin.</p><p>“Jadzia. How is Emilia getting along?” Roksana asks her—it <em>is </em>Jadzia, then—and she laughs, a merry pealing of bells that alerts every one of Jaskier’s senses.</p><p>“The witcher is enamoured with her. They will be busy for several hours yet, I shall think.”</p><p>“<em>Slut</em>.”</p><p>“Kaz! That is enough,” Roksana’s voice rings out sharply, and Jaskier flinches—he <em>flinches</em>, and that is the end for him. He’d imagined, before, that had he stayed confident and spoken easily enough, they would have known that he was not so easy as they had imagined; they would have let him go.</p><p>They won’t. Not now. Not when they can <em>smell </em>the fear on him; not when he is such easy prey.</p><p>“Ah, Julian, no need to worry,” Jadzia comes into view, smiling. She is beautiful, like a poisonous flower, and Jaskier glares at her with all of the hate that he can muster.</p><p>His lute is taken from his hands; he doesn’t even try to fight. He won’t need it where he’s going, and eventually, they’ll give him a new one, when he has begged and begged and begged for the chance to redeem himself, to sing for them, to perform and show that he is worthy of the kindness they have shown him.</p><p>When they have broken him so thoroughly that he won’t even <em>remember</em> who Jaskier was, and what he had done. When he is only Julian.</p><p>“—and of course, we will need to get you new clothes,” somebody is saying in his ear, and he is too tired to try and discern which of them is talking to him, only that he is being marched somewhere and he is surrounded on all sides, and he—</p><p>His feet are carrying him, he knows. His arms swing slightly by his side. He imagines he must be looking where he is going, for he does not fall nor trip nor stumble, and he does not walk into somebody.</p><p>But his mind, his thoughts, are far, far away. In an ocean somewhere. There is blue water all around him, and the sky above him is bright and cloudless, and the sun is a perfect circle of bright light in the sky. Water birds cry overhead as they flap out a constant rhythm, like the beating of drums, and—</p><p>He can hear a Song. Many of them, harmonising together in a way that makes his blood <em>sing</em>, and he turns and swims towards them, and he isn’t frightened or hurt, here, there is only the swimming, and the Singing.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world becomes much, much bigger for the first time when Dandelion is still very, very small.</p><p>For the first several years of his life, you see, he and the other children of his pod have been explicitly banned from swimming too close to the surface.</p><p>It is for safety, they are told. Humans are dangerous beasts, to be avoided at all costs, and above the surface of the water is where they live. It is where they build their ‘houses’ and their ‘boats’ and breed and spread messily all over this Continent they are so fond of, and they drive out anything that is unlike them.</p><p>Dandelion is enraptured, from the first he hears of them.</p><p>He and his peers are swimming amongst a reef, chasing one another, round and round; when they inevitably get tired they rest, watching the fishes dart from them in idle curiosity.</p><p>“What do you suppose is up there?” Janya asks.</p><p>“Monsters,” shudders little Resha, her eyes pale and her lower lip sucked between her teeth.</p><p>“There are no monsters up there,” Radek, her older brother and the oldest of those gathered, scoffs.</p><p>“So you’ll go up there?” Aleks elbows him with a sharp grin, and Radek scowls at him.</p><p>“I don’t wish to,” he says.</p><p>“You’re frightened.”</p><p>“Am not!”</p><p>“Yes, you <em>are</em>. Besides, we’re banned from going up there,” Aleks claps a hand on his shoulder, ruffling the spines that sprout there.</p><p>“I bet <em>you’d </em>go up there,” Anya winks at Dandelion, all serrated teeth and red eyes and danger, danger, danger—her pod are only visiting theirs, and she is as wild as stormy waves.</p><p>“Of course he wouldn’t,” Radek laughs meanly. It twists his face into something ugly and Dandelion decides then and there he is going to do it.</p><p>He gives a careless flip of his tale at the wide-eyed looks of wonder his peers give as he swims upwards, upwards, into the lighter waters, where it can be almost unbearably warm in the summer—</p><p>He is at the very roof of his world. The highest he can ever be. And then he dares to go further.</p><p>He looks upon the rest of the world for the very first time.</p><p>The sky is like—like looking upon a school of a million, million fish, every one of them overlapping, in orange and pink and red and purple hues; behind him, the sky is an inky black, and before him is the brightness of the <em>sun</em>, seen through no filter but his own eyes.</p><p>He will never see anything so beautiful again, he is sure.</p><p>He watches the sun go down, watches the colours change and the brightness slip away, watches as that inky blackness consumes the sky.</p><p>Not that the night is any less beautiful. Bright lights look back at him, scattered lazily across an inky backdrop, a shining silver disk casting light and illuminating the flat ocean around him; his eyes glimmer in the light of a million, million stars, and that is it for him. This is what he will spend the rest of his life pursuing.</p><p>The ocean has always been enough—but now, he knows, irrevocably, that there is <em>more</em>, and he wants it. He wants to touch those shining lights, and hold them in his hands.</p><p>No, Dandelion isn’t much like the other boys.</p><p>He has always been too curious, too brave, and in all the wrong ways. When the warriors of their pod begin their training, he takes every opportunity he can to slip away; he can fight with daggers and is handy with a spear, and he flees at the first chance.</p><p>His mother calls him <em>Dandelion</em>, and for that, he is unlike the other boys, too. She names him after the flower her father had gifted her mother, before leaving them both to the sea and returning to his confusing land of mud and trees and houses. The other boys dislike his name. It is too different, too <em>other</em>. It is a reminder of the world they are meant to be afraid of, and the creatures who hunt them.</p><p>He spends little and less time hunting creatures for sport; he spends little and less time Singing, in great, shrieking cries at ships that pass them too close.</p><p>Dandelion sings, too—but he sings with words; of people and flowers and trees and of the great blue sky above all of them; he sings songs he has heard from the great galleys and fishing boats as they pass overhead; he sings songs his mother teaches him, that her mother taught her.</p><p>He likes singing. He likes filling the world with music, and making his mother smile as he sings to her of a field of flowers, and of good men doing good things for good reasons. It is a reminder to her of a half-human father she never knew, who had chosen a life on land with his own father over a life in the sea.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Dandelion’s mother’s mother had died of a broken heart, when she was very young; Dandelion’s father is a warrior, from a pod that travels the wold over, and so Dandelion is all she has.</p><p>She doesn’t smile very often. He does his best to fix that.</p><p>“Mother,” he asks her one day, his voice strangled and shrill. The voice of a siren, in a siren’s tongue; he isn’t supposed to use human words with others of their kind, she has warned him. It is <em>unnatural</em>. “Why is the sky blue?”</p><p>She smiled at him. It is a small, soft, thing, and he thinks it is rather sad. “My father once told me that we live in the eye of a sleeping giant.”</p><p>“A <em>giant?”</em></p><p>“Very tall men,” she clarifies. “Ten or twenty or a hundred feet tall, who could uproot trees from the ground, and pull mountains down, if they wanted. There aren’t any left.”</p><p>Dandelion doesn’t know how tall ten or twenty or one hundred feet is, and he has never seen a tree, nor a mountain, nor a man. “If they’re all gone,” he says slowly, “how can we be in the eye of a sleeping one?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Maybe we’re not in the eye of a giant at all. Maybe it’s all just magic,” she says, and he latches onto that last word like anemone to a rock.</p><p>“<em>Magic?</em>”</p><p>She sighs. He doesn’t know why. “Yes, my Dandelion, magic; controlling the chaos of the world.”</p><p>“I think I’d like to do that,” he says thoughtfully. “I’d like to go and meet somebody who can do that.”</p><p>His mother doesn’t answer him.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Dandelion returns from his first venture onto land to find that his mother is dead.</p><p>An accident, they tell him.</p><p>He knows the truth.</p><p>She had always expected him to leave her.</p><p>He finds, looking down at her body, splayed out amongst the coral, that he had always expected this to happen, too.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Dandelion isn’t like the other boys. He is braver than all of them, and in all the wrong ways.</p><p>“What will you do if a <em>nixa </em>comes after you?” Aleks once asks him, catching Dandelion as he prepares to slip away to the coast.</p><p>“I’ll swim away,” Dandelion replies.</p><p>Radek, who follows Aleks wherever he goes yet will deny it to his last breath, scoffs. “Nixa can <em>fly</em>,” he says patronisingly, “as well as swim. How will you escape <em>that</em>?”</p><p>“I’m fast,” Dandelion boasts, because he knows it to be true. “Faster than some stupid old nixa.”</p><p>“Bet I’m faster,” Aleks dares him, and the three of them tear away, to the usual end point of their races—a half-rotted skiff, wedged into the reef.</p><p>Dandelion wins, just as he always does, because he <em>is </em>fast—more streamlined than many of his peers, and his tail is longer and thinner. He is not so much of an intimidating presence in the water; he is not adorned with sharp spines no so many fins as many of his pod are. His talons and fangs are slimmer, more delicate, more suited to slicing than <em>ripping</em>—but he is <em>fast</em>.</p><p>He is a survivor.</p><p>Later, both Aleks and Radek will die. One will be caught in a fishing net, as so many of their kind are, and he will be killed; the other will wash ashore in the most frightful storm of the century, and something from the woods will attack him, and eat him.</p><p>Dandelion goes through hell and back himself, but he is a <em>survivor</em>.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He is the bravest of his peers, and so when he is three metres long and nearly full-grown, he dares to swim into a bay.</p><p>He stays far below the surface, where the sun reflecting off his scales can be passed as a trick of the light, and he will remain mostly camouflaged under the waves. He watches the blurred figures of people—real <em>people</em>—overhead as they go about their work.</p><p>He watches and plays underneath the great looming shadows of the boats, as they travel in and out of port, churning the water below them.</p><p>He listens to the chatter of the humans, the lyrics and the tunes of their songs, and slowly, slowly, he falls in love with this other world.</p><p>It takes days and weeks for him to finally scrounge up the courage to exchange his tail and fins and fangs for legs and figures and smooth skin, unmarred by scales. Not all sirens have this ability, but he has known—just <em>known</em>, in his gut—since he was very small that he could do this.</p><p>His first steps are wobbly and he crashes to the floor almost immediately. It is the most alien feeling you can imagine—being able to swim in any and every direction, to suddenly being limited to simply one axis, and having to <em>bear your own weight</em>—</p><p>It is alien, and very surreal, but he gets it. It takes him a few hours, but by the end of it he is able to steal a sailor’s uniform, evidently waiting to be mended, and he finds himself amongst the hectic activity that are the docks, pressed upon by all sides by people who barely even look at him.</p><p>It is <em>fascinating</em>.</p><p>The noise, for one, is astounding. Underwater, everything is muted; it becomes one song, the song of the ocean, and it filters through the waves gently.</p><p>Up here, everything is brash and loud and it happens all so <em>quickly</em>; Dandelion quickly learns that simply because he knows the language does not mean he will be able to converse with native speakers immediately.</p><p>After an entire afternoon of sitting and watching the bustling men, he manages to get himself a dinner of cooked fish from the men serving the other sailors. They look at his uniform and ask no questions.</p><p>It is fresh, and they have salted it and added—something sharp, <em>lemon</em>, he hears them say. Lemon. He’s never seen a lemon, and he’s just tasted one for the very first time.</p><p>He has never had cooked fish, before, either, so it is another novelty. He decides he quite likes it.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He returns home, and his mother is dead, and now he is alone.</p><p>He isn’t <em>shunned</em>, per se. There are now simply fewer people willing to talk with him about matters that are not hunting, or fighting, or the ocean. Dandelion dares to dream of a world beyond the one he was born into, and there are few in his pod who may same the same.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He returns to the docks.</p><p>Day after day, he finds himself going back there—he is even pressed into service on a few of the ships, several times, carrying things and tying knots. He learns a lot more about sailing atop the water than he will ever have the occasion to use.</p><p>The sailors are all grizzly and gruff, but rather friendly. They sit together as the sun sets and drink, talking and laughing like they have known one another for years when it is every likelihood that they have only met that day, and won’t see one another again.</p><p>He sits with them, listening to their stories, and learns what it is to be <em>human</em>. To be a man.</p><p>They give him ale, which he has never had, and he gets drunk on it fairly quickly; they laugh at his antics and it serves to teach him more about humans than simply talking to them ever could. People are far more honest, when they are drunk—if you know where to look.</p><p>He learns other things from them as well.</p><p>He finds himself fumbling with a young sailor behind one of the boat houses; they moan and rut together and the boy presses his lips to Dandelion’s, and it is one more intoxicating scent in the allure that is the land, as compared to the sea. He can see why one might be persuaded to stay.</p><p>He returns time and time again. He becomes drunk on sunlight and wooden beams and the great tall ships around him; on boys’ lips and the mud between his toes and grass beneath his feet; on the great sentinel trees in the distance, and the great blue sky overhead.</p><p>Dandelion is in love with this world around him.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The ocean has always been his home.</p><p>It is the only reason he returns.</p><p>His mother’s memory has faded on the ocean currents. He is full-grown, now; he has walked on land dozens of times. He has both the awe and the disdain of his peers, for being too <em>human</em>, too <em>other</em>.</p><p>He is alone, now. He and his pod are cordial; age has widened the gaps between himself and his peers that had been surmounted when they were very young, when the gaps were not so glaring, not so alienating. His peers take their weapons and he takes his singing and they go their separate ways.</p><p>It is not so bad, being alone.</p><p>He hunts for himself, and brings kills to the elders of his pod, who struggle with manoeuvring, or the short bursts of accelerating necessary to catch the wily sea life they all live on; or those who are too busy with the day to day logistics of managing a pod and the ocean that surrounds him.</p><p>They always thank him, having seen him grow from just a small baby into this full-fledged siren before him. They always seem puzzled that he is helping him. He has long grown out of being offended.</p><p>They discuss with him neutral topics, but he is too different—too interested in the sun and the stars and the trees. They always remain some distance. He still is not offended. Dandelion knows it is for the best.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It is inevitable, really, that he is taken.</p><p>It is a still night; the moon is bright and full and the ship is silent as it glides across the water, hunting.</p><p>It is trailing long nets, nearly invisible to sirens under these conditions. They have perfected their techniques.</p><p>Jaskier becomes tangled, and as he strains to free himself he only tires himself further, until he is dragging, exhausted and terrified, behind the boat.</p><p>They drag him up. He is tossed onto the boat with as little dignity as the shoals and shoals of fish the fisherman’s boats drag up—but this is no fisherman’s boat.</p><p>The men know their work.</p><p>Somebody slips a rope about his neck and pulls it tight, and his roar, his untrained Singing is cut off before it can even begin.</p><p>He grabs at the rope, tries to slice through it with talons, tries to beat at the men who come at him with his great tail, but he never knew how <em>heavy </em>it would be without water cradling its weight and they overpower him easily, binding it tightly and grabbing his hands. They chain them together, then slip a sack over both the chains and his hands and tie that, too—not taking any risks.</p><p>A sack is shoved over his head, and darkness consumes him.</p><p>He is tossed unceremoniously—somewhere, and he is left there.</p><p>The ship sails for days, on and on and on, to a shore on the other side of the world, so that he is hopelessly, hopelessly lost—he is not sure he will ever find his home again.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Dandelion has never known hate. Not truly.</p><p>He has <em>disliked</em> things, and people, and he has been frightened of things he does not understand, and he has been annoyed and frustrated and upset.</p><p>But he has never <em>hated</em>.</p><p>He hates now.</p><p>He hates the stone floor beneath him, that leeches all heat from the air and bruises him where he is forced to kneel.</p><p>He hates the post that he is tied to, that he cannot escape. There are deep gouges in the wood from his struggles and yet the thing stands as steadfast as ever.</p><p>He hates the men whose faces he doesn’t see, who come and take their pleasure from him.</p><p>He hates the lash, hates each and every strike of it, hates the men who wield it; Stefan and Andrzej; father and son.</p><p>There is another man who comes around, one whose face he has seen and who has no relation to Stefan or Andrzej; Kazimierz, they call him. Instead he seems to delight in the cruelty. In the ‘breaking’ of him.</p><p>Like a horse, to be ridden, they joke to one another. Dandelion has never seen a horse, but he has the utmost sympathy if <em>this </em>is their lot in life.</p><p>They take a long time in breaking him.</p><p>In the first few weeks they have him, he manages to hold fast to his rage, to his hatred, and it keeps him warm during the never-ending night as frost grows over the floor and the walls, and though he has been forced into his human form while out of the water, and weighed down with manacles and chains and ropes, he bares his teeth and hisses at all those who come near.</p><p>He cannot escape them, however, so they merely laugh and have their way with him.</p><p>The pain is inescapable, too.</p><p>And, after weeks have gone by and every day becomes more and more of an individual struggle, he feels <em>himself </em>slipping away. He feels himself clinging to the parts of himself that have mean he is alive rather than mean he is <em>himself</em>, is Dandelion.</p><p>Days and days, he is stripped down, until there is nothing of him left.</p><p>They begin to give him different names. Meaningless labels, only something for them to call him during the short time they are with him, but only one ever really sticks.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Kazimierz has begun visiting the siren without Stefan and Andrzej, his sadistic streak not nearly sated with the short time he spends with the creature while in their company.</p><p>This time he has brought his sister, Maryla. He wishes now that he hadn’t; she is disapproving, and ordering him to stop, to let the creature go.</p><p>“Kaz, you can’t just—”</p><p>“Can’t what? I think you’ll find I <em>can</em>, Maryla. He’s not even human.”</p><p>“What <em>is </em>he, then?”</p><p>“A siren,” Kaz smirks, toeing it with his boot. “Doesn’t much look like one though, does he?”</p><p>Maryla has gone queerly quiet. The hysterics have stopped. The creature’s ears are ringing still. “I’ve never met a siren,” she says. “Don’t they sing?”</p><p>“Not this one. They’d been watching him for a while before they nabbed him—he hadn’t learnt to control his Voice, yet. We’re working on beating it out of him.”</p><p>A hand, warm and soft and the first gentle touch he has had in days, lands on the siren’s back and he flinches under it.</p><p>“I heard they have the most beautiful voices,” she murmurs. The siren flinches again.</p><p>“This one’s hoarse from screaming,” Kaz sneers, and the hand on the creature’s neck tightens momentarily before soothing him again, a thumb rubbing over the topmost knob of his spine. He is so, so thin.</p><p>“I want him,” Maryla says, and Kaz chuckles, low.</p><p>“Stefan would never allow—”</p><p>“I <em>want him</em>,” she hisses, her hand still careful on the creature’s neck, and the creature finds himself grateful for it.</p><p>There is a pregnant pause—twins, staring at each other, locked in a stand-off.</p><p>“What is happening here?” a voice interrupts—it is Andrzej, and the creature shivers.</p><p>Kazimierz begins to stutter out an explanation, but Maryla cuts him off impatiently.</p><p>“I want this siren. I want it to sing for me,” she says, her voice now silken smooth and—flirtatious, almost.</p><p>A beat of silence, then— “<em>that? </em>Maryla—”</p><p>“I’ll train him, and keep him clean and out of the way.” The hand slips off of his neck, and the creature cannot hear more from either of them, though they speak still in a low rumble.</p><p>Then his bonds are being untied, and he slumps to the floor, and darkness overwhelms him as his body drops from the position he has been forced into for so very long.</p><p>~~~</p><p>“Julian,” somebody says to him when he wakes.</p><p>He wakes slowly. Consciousness begins as a dull, throbbing pain interrupting his dreams, but he has been in so much pain for so long now that he barely notices it.</p><p>And then his body grows heavy, and heavier, but tied to that post by his wrists he was so, so heavy anyway, and he barely notices this, too.</p><p>It is the light that does it. He had been in the dark for months, and now bright sunlight streams into the room and he cannot help but squirm uncomfortably away from it.</p><p>There is no gag in his mouth. He is not bound, and his wounds have been dressed.</p><p>There is a collar about his neck, and it stops him from trading his legs for a tail and his ordinary teeth for knife-like fangs, and he rumbles in displeasure.</p><p>“<em>Julian</em>,” he hears again, and he opens his eyes despite his discomfort.</p><p>He is up and away from the source of the voice in a split second, crashing to the floor and scrambling across it, pure adrenaline fuelling him as his stomach cramps and his muscles <em>burn </em>from the brief exercise.</p><p>Somebody is shushing him—there are two people shushing him, and he whips around to look at them.</p><p>A woman, and a man.</p><p>“Julian,” the woman says, and some spark of him recognises the voice—Maryla, from before. She managed to win him, then.</p><p>“Your name is Julian,” the man tells him. The creature—Julian—flinches away from him; one doesn’t endure all that he has in the past months at the hands of men and then feel comfortable around them again. “I’m Dawid, and this is Maryla.”</p><p>Julian just looks at them, uncomprehending, working his throat roughly.</p><p>“Here,” Maryla hands him a wine skin, and Julian takes it and pours some into his mouth; it is filled with water, and he nearly moans at the relief of it.</p><p>“You have a lot to learn,” Dawid tells him. “If you want to survive here, you’ll need to learn.”</p><p>Julian doesn’t care.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He is handed something that they call a lute. His music instructors praised his singing, and think it would be good to set it to music; they try him with many things, but he likes his lute the best.</p><p>He’s good at it, too.</p><p>Before long he is performing for Dawid and Maryla, weeks after they first pulled him from that pit, and they treat him like—like a favoured pet, almost. Or a younger brother. He is not their equal, and never will he be, but he can pretend that he is when they are watching him perform, enraptured.</p><p>He gets better at his music.</p><p>~~~</p><p>One day, he is dragged from the rooms Maryla had given him, and the horrible, hateful collar is pulled from his throat and he is tossed unceremoniously into a stale, dug-out pool of water, and before he even hits the surface he has exchanged his legs for a tail, and fins and scales sprout from his skin and he roars with frustration once he is submerged.</p><p>There are bars fitted over the pond, and he flings himself at them, but they do not budge.</p><p>All day, men and women pass by his pool and gawk inside, pointing at his colours and his teeth and the way his fins trail and flatten against the glass, and he has never felt so vulnerable—not even when he had been tied to <em>that post.</em></p><p>He finds that he hates this, too.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Julian spends his nights in his rooms, and his days as an attraction for the lords and ladies of the court he is now a belonging of.</p><p>At first, he is terribly lonely. His rooms are bare and there is little entertainment to speak of.</p><p>And then Dawid starts visiting, when he ought to be sleeping.</p><p>At first… at first it is just talking. They never talk about Julian; never talk about who he was before, or where he is from; rather, they talk about Dawid, and his family. They talk about Stefan and Andrzej, and how that whole fucking family is a pit of vipers. They talk about Stefan’s arguments with his biggest rival, Kondrat.</p><p>They talk about the stars, and mountains, and great open plains, and Julian is introduced to poetry. He is introduced to more songs.</p><p>He performs them for Dawid, playing his lute and singing the lyrics, until all trace of an accent is gone and he is entirely fluent in the language.</p><p>Dawid kisses Julian ten months after he was taken from the sea, and Julian sinks into it, because if this is the only happiness that he can have then he is going to grasp it with both hands.</p><p>~~~</p><p>One night, Dawid brings all of his family to Julian’s rooms, and he plays for them.</p><p>Casmir, the youngest, is enraptured, watching Julian’s clever fingers skim over the strings of his lute with awe writ across his face. Emilia and Jadzia watch with cool amusement in their eyes, and Julian is uncomfortable under their scrutiny—he cannot tell what they are thinking.</p><p>Kazimierz does not attend, but Maryla does, and she smiles and claps.</p><p>The mother, Roksana, watches him with barely concealed hatred, and he cannot bring himself to look at her throughout the entire duration.</p><p>Julian plays his songs, and at the very end of the night when they have all left, Dawid kisses him sweetly and tells him that he has been betrothed.</p><p>“We can still meet,” he whispers in Julian’s ear. “But it cannot be as often.”</p><p>Julian holds Dawid’s face in his hands and kisses him again, whispering his gratitude that Dawid will not forget him; he cries when Dawid leaves, because he is doomed to lose everything good in his life, it seems.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Aurelia is golden, when he first sees her.</p><p>He sees her from his window, walking the gardens on the arm of her sister. The sun has gilded the garden in a golden glow as the sun begins to dip in the sky, and the scent of flowers is heavy on the air.</p><p>She turns, and looks up at him, and he draws away from the window—but not completely. Not completely.</p><p>Their eyes meet, and something sparks, low in his stomach.</p><p>She comes to see him, after. She talks to him. About everything and nothing.</p><p>She is Stefan’s daughter, with his same steel-grey eyes, and his skin feels like fire where she touches him.</p><p>Aurelia is different in every way from Dawid. Dawid would give; he’d give and give and give until Julian was a shaking, trembling mess beneath his hands, until Julian couldn’t <em>think</em>.</p><p>Aurelia takes. She slips her hand around him and takes his pleasure for her own.</p><p>They lay together, after, panting hard, and Aurelia slips her hand into his and smiles at him, and he finds it in himself to smile back.</p><p>“That’s the first time I ever—” she begins, then breaks off hesitantly.</p><p>He frowns. “Are you alright? I’ve heard—”</p><p>“I’m fine,” she interrupts, a smile on her lips. “Really. I wanted my first time to be on <em>my </em>terms.”</p><p>Julian feels… ashamed, when she has left.</p><p>That feeling of shame grows, rather than lessens, as she continues to visit him.  </p><p>~~~</p><p>He tells Dawid of her, when he next deigns to grace Julian with his presence, and Dawid tells him she’s too dangerous.</p><p>“Her entire <em>family </em>is going to <em>crush you</em>,” the man tells him, and Julian frowns.</p><p>“They won’t find out,” he tells Dawid earnestly, and receives only a head shake in return.</p><p>“Julian—<em>Julian</em>, don’t be stupid. You know they will. It won’t even take that long. And they’ll end you,” Dawid warns him, his hands slipping from Julian’s even as the sweat dries on their skin, and Julian feels him slipping away entirely.</p><p>“Dawid—” he tries, but the man shakes his head again.</p><p>“I’m leaving, with my wife. I’ve been granted lands of my own; I need to go and rule them. This’ll be the last time between us,” he says to Julian.</p><p>Julian draws away entirely. “You didn’t—you could have <em>told </em>me,” he says wretchedly.</p><p>His life has been narrowed entirely down to the relationships in it. His days are hell, trapped in that box with strangers gawking at him, and his nights are lonely, trapped in these rooms.</p><p>When Dawid, when Maryla, when Aurelia visit him, his life brightens; he remembers, almost, the briefest caress of sunshine on his face, or grass beneath his feet.</p><p>Then Dawid leaves, and it is only Maryla and Aurelia who brighten his days, and the number of their visits dwindle with the passing of the months.</p><p>He is taken to his pool, one day, to find that the bars have been taken off the top of it completely. Julian swims about the bottom of it, glaring up at the humans peering curiously down at him. He feels a stirring, some spark lighting up, some ember of anger rekindling, and wonders what he might do.</p><p>He is so, so tired, of being meek and quiet and compliant.</p><p>“Marvellous creature, isn’t it?” one of the men standing about his pool asks of the woman clutching at his arm. She smiles nervously, and nods, though she doesn’t look very much in agreement with him.</p><p>Julian shows them his fangs. He’s <em>tired</em>.</p><p>The woman gasps and backs away somewhat, but the man steps <em>closer</em>, and Julian holds his ground. He remains where he is. His pool isn’t big enough for him to put much distance between himself and the man, anyway; he cannot possibly be punished for this man making his own bad decisions.</p><p>“Rekni, don’t,” one of the other men say, a pipe held carelessly in his mouth and a pinched-faced woman on his arm. “That monster will eat you whole if you give it half a chance.”</p><p>“You don’t think I could hold my own?” Rekni turns to smirk at the man, and Julian nearly strikes then—but the distance is too great still. He wonders at the urge to strike. That low coil in his belly, tensing and winding then unwinding again; he feels like a spring that has been drawn down and down and down, and will at any moment burst free.</p><p>“Not without ruining those clothes,” the man laughs, to the merriment of the assembled group. Rekni scoffs, and turns back to look at Julian. He takes another step closer.</p><p>Julian inches back, ever so carefully—drawing all of his concentration, all of the parts of him that have not been shattered, to mask the hatred he is feeling, to make it seem like he’s frightened. Not at all like he is luring his prey into a trap.</p><p>“See, look at him! Timid little thing, aren’t you,” Rekni jeers, taking another step. He is a scant meter away—possibly Julian could make the distance in time. “He hasn’t the courage to attack.”</p><p>If there is one thing Julian has always possessed, it is courage. Courage is what fuelled him when he was small, and trying to touch the stars; courage is what kept him going when his mother died; courage is what is getting him through this nightmare.</p><p>Renki takes another step. Julian gathers all of his courage, and strikes.</p><p>Faster than a viper, with a single powerful thrust of his tail, he launches himself at the human, covering the distance between the two of them in a bare half-second—he has sunk his fangs into Rekni’s neck before the man even realises he is in danger, before he even has a chance to scream, and Julian drags the body into his pool and drags him to the bottom.</p><p>There are screams, overhead; Julian draws away from Rekni’s still-thrashing body to scream back, his Voice in full effect, simply to be contrary. It serves to stir them even more into a frenzy.</p><p>Julian is <em>hungry</em>. He looks at Rekni. The man’s pale grey eyes stare back at him. His blood is still hot in Julian’s mouth, and sirens have been eating humans for as long as the two knew of the existence of the other—</p><p>But Julian has never eaten a human, and he isn’t prepared yet to let this place twist himself into such a vile caricature of himself; he drops the corpse and watches with idle curiosity as it sinks the last few inches, dead eyes staring up at him.</p><p>He had thought that killing a person might feel different, but all he feels is cold.</p><p>He is tossed back into that dungeon, and tied back onto that post.</p><p>Julian holds onto himself more, this time. He grits his teeth and forces himself to <em>remember</em>.</p><p>They reintroduce him to the court as Julian Alfred Pankratz, the tamed siren, with shackle after shackle after shackle weighing him down and hidden beneath his silks, his long tail under threat of dismemberment should he use it to attack, to try to escape.</p><p>He sings for them, and plays his lute, and he is so, so lonely.</p><p>They applaud his performances and he <em>hates </em>it; he hates it more than he hated the pool. There are no barriers, between him and them, and is feels like an exposed nerve, raw and vulnerable and he cannot escape it, not even when he goes to his rooms, because they smell all wrong and are too cold and he’s <em>stuck in this godforsaken form</em>, and he would rather die than stay here.</p><p>Kondrat comes and speaks to him one night. He is the opposite of Stefan in every way, and Julian can almost relax in his presence. They speak of his songs, of his lute, of poetry. Kondrat is a man of learning, Julian finds.</p><p>Justyn, Kondrat’s son, visits him the next night, and Julian finds that he likes him better. He is younger, and more carefree, and he sees the world in the way that Julian wants to see it; as something to admire, and be excited about.</p><p>Julian hasn’t been excited in months.</p><p>Two years after he was taken, Justyn kisses Julian in his rooms, and it’s <em>nice</em>. It’s warm and intimate and Julian realises he had <em>missed this</em>.</p><p>Then Justyn breaks away with a shocked gasp, and Julian flings himself away, too, expecting the blow to come.</p><p>It doesn’t.</p><p>“<em>Julian</em>,” Justyn says, his tone horrified. “I—I’m <em>so sorry—”</em></p><p>“What are you sorry for?” Julian asks, confused.</p><p>Justyn looks distraught. “The fact that you don’t even know—<em>Julian</em>. I can’t take advantage of you.”</p><p>He frowns. “What do you mean, take advantage?”</p><p>“I mean—you don’t want this.”</p><p>Julian smiles at him. Gestures to how much he <em>wants this;</em> the physical evidence is rather brazen, after all. “Believe me, I do,” he reassures the man.</p><p>Justyn shakes his head. “You can’t possible know. Not—you’re a <em>prisoner </em>here,” he says, and Julian doesn’t understand. “You can’t know if you want this because <em>you </em>want this, or because you’re so frightened and alone and desperate for affection—”</p><p>“Justyn—Justyn,” Julian cuts him off, worried now. He doesn’t understand. “It’s just sex,” he says, “and I’m not some fragile flower. <em>I want this</em>,” he leans forward, capturing the human’s lips again, and Justyn groans into his mouth, and Julian knows he has him.</p><p>Julian performs for the courts. He passes another year this way.</p><p>Justyn wipes some blood from the corner of his mouth. “They can’t keep doing this to you,” he tells the siren.</p><p>Julian smiles. “They can. I belong to them.”</p><p>“You <em>belong </em>to <em>nobody,</em>” Justyn hisses, and Julian shakes his head good-naturedly; they have had this argument before.</p><p>“I’m a <em>pet</em>,” he tells Justyn; the other man has always refused to see the reasoning behind this, but Julian doesn’t mind. He will explain things to Justyn a hundred times over, and more, if it means he will not abandon Julian, like so many others have.  </p><p>“You’re a prisoner,” Justyn says sadly, sweeping a hand down Julian’s side, “and you’ve been—tortured. You’re not a pet, nor are you a belonging.”</p><p>Julian simply hums. “I should rest. I’m singing again tomorrow,” he tells the human.</p><p>Justyn gives him a sad little smile, and kisses his brow. “Okay,” he says, and Julian watches him leave.</p><p>He hums, and forces himself to quell the old familiar urges that have risen up with Justyn’s words; forces himself to content himself with his life. It isn’t a <em>bad </em>life. He has plenty to eat and drink and the admiration of some of the most powerful lords and ladies this side of the Continent, and he has a good man to warm his bed and the favour of a powerful woman, and he has his lute and his music. He has plenty to be happy about.</p><p>He doesn’t have his freedom.</p><p>The windows in his room provide beautiful, wide-open views of the gardens. At first, these views could entertain him all night; now, the stars in the sky are a mocking reminder that he will never feel the air on his face as a free man again, and the whispering winds through the leaves on the trees make the stale, humid air of his room itch against his skin.</p><p>Weeks and weeks go by, and the mantra of <em>you should be grateful, you have so much</em>, becomes old and stale and not nearly so effective as it was.</p><p>Julian wants to be <em>free</em>. He hates and loves himself for it. He wishes he had never known freedom, so he might be content here. He wishes he’d never been captured, so he might never have known imprisonment. He wishes he’d never crawled onto land that first time; that he’d stayed with his mother and integrated more with his pod and never spent his childhood wishing himself wholeheartedly somewhere else.</p><p>He asks Aurelia, once, if her father and brother would ever consider freeing him. She slaps him.</p><p>“Don’t you <em>dare</em>,” she hisses, “be ungrateful for what my family has given you.”</p><p><em>A prison</em>, he thinks idly to himself, but he doesn’t say it. She runs a hand down his chest.</p><p>“I’m sorry, lovely,” he tells her, rearranging his face into contriteness. “That was rude of me.”</p><p>“It was,” she agrees, climbing aboard him. It hurts, as he is too sensitive still from all the fun she has had from him before, but he does not show it. Not yet, anyway.</p><p>He does not ask her again; it would not do to upset her overmuch, nor to earn the ire of her father.</p><p>Days pass, and he cannot relieve the itch from under his skin.</p><p>He asks Justyn, too, of his freedom, and the man goes quiet and still. “My father—” he says, then breaks off abruptly.</p><p>“Don’t give me false hope,” Julian pleads, his voice just the wrong side of neutral, and Justyn nods.</p><p>It is months before it is brought up again.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It is Kondrat who tells him.</p><p>He catches Julian in his room, when the moon is black and the stars are hidden by clouds, and the man is just a shadow in Julian’s room.</p><p>“What are you here for?” Julian asks. He is not afraid. He has had all of this taken from him already, and he <em>likes </em>Kondrat; he wouldn’t mind, if the older man were here for some company.</p><p>“We’re getting you out,” Kondrat whispers. “The next new moon. Prepare yourself.”</p><p>Then Kondrat is gone, a whisper on the wind; as though he was never there at all. His words are just breaths in the air, though they carry weight enough that Julian cannot bear it, cannot bear the hope that blooms suddenly in his chest, cannot bear the thought of what he will do should this hope be crushed. He does not know that he will recover.</p><p>Julian rolls over, and goes to sleep.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The month passes agonisingly slowly.</p><p>Julian finds himself wishing to see Dawid again. To tell him that he has found somebody, else, somebody who <em>truly </em>cares for him—cares for him enough to free him. He wonders what Dawid would say. How disapproving he would be.</p><p>Two days before the new moon, Aurelia is laying in his bed, and she is stroking a hand over his hair, running her fingers through the strands. He almost purrs under the attention—almost, but not quite, because his body is still sore and because the nearer the new moon becomes the more stressed out he finds himself.</p><p>“I can’t see you tomorrow night,” she tells him, “Andrzej wants me to go to some concert with him—terribly dull—but I can see you the night after.”</p><p>“No!” Julian blurts, before he can stop himself. “—you can’t,” he finishes lamely, trying desperately to think of an excuse. Her hand has tightened in his hair.</p><p>“Whyever not?” she demands; her voice cold, her nails like talons where they scratch lightly against his scalp; a warning of what she could do.</p><p>“It’s—” he hesitates, “complicated,” he winces; considering his proficiency in language he really ought to be able to lie on the spot better. “Um… it’s a siren thing. You don’t really want me to explain it,” he tries to save himself, and thankfully, <em>thankfully</em>, she hums, apparently accepting his excuse.</p><p>“Alright, then. I won’t see you at all next week; my father is considering marrying me off to some dreadful young lord from—do you know, I can’t even remember where he’s from. Anyway, I shall have to play the gracious host and smile and dance and then politely reject him—”</p><p>Julian stops listening, absorbed instead in dreams of being <em>free.</em></p><p>
  <em>~~~</em>
</p><p>On the night of the new moon, there is a knock on his door, and Julian springs out of bed.</p><p>He is dressed already, in his drabbest clothes, and Konkrat hands him a thick cloak to wrap around himself and a satchel besides.</p><p>“Clothes, and food, and money,” the man explains at Julian’s puzzled look.</p><p>
  <em>It’s happening.</em>
</p><p>“Wait,” Konkrat says to him, reaching for Julian’s neck.</p><p>Julian has his hand pinned to the wall and a snarl on his lips in a half second; the human does not flinch, only looks at him steadily.</p><p>“Your collar,” he explains. “I’m taking off your collar.”</p><p>Julian releases him, and just barely holds still as the man reaches up and slips the leather from around his throat.</p><p>It’s gilded in some magic that means Julian cannot interfere with it himself, and as soon as it slips away he rolls his neck, summons his fangs and his talons, breathing a sigh of relief as his siren skin slips back around him, his tail and gills and scales only a whisper away.</p><p>“Come,” he is ordered, and he follows on silent feet.</p><p>He can barely contain the emotions that swell inside him as they hurry down corridors; Julian has been here years, now, and he has never seen these corridors before. They aren’t even that far from his rooms—a testament to the utter uniformity that has been a staple of his life here, and Julian decides something, there and then.</p><p>Konkrat has a knife and a sword sheathed at his belt. So too will any guards they cross, and so if it looks as though he will be taken back to his rooms—or to that dungeon—he will take a knife and do what he must.</p><p>He will not be imprisoned again.</p><p>They slip into one of the three towers and descend in darkness, Konkrat taking the lead, his hand braced against the wall as he moves through the darkness. Julian can see well enough, his pupils blown wide, and bred as he is to see in the darkness of the ocean’s depths; Konkrat must have something augmenting his sight, else he would have fallen a dozen times already.</p><p>The stairs bring them out to a long corridor, and Julian can smell wet earth and fresh air; they are not far now.</p><p>Caught up as he is in the promise of freedom, close enough that he can taste it, Julian misses the footfalls and the smells and the presence of other people until it is almost too late. It is a prickling on the back of his neck that saves him, some survival instinct he has suppressed that suddenly flares up—</p><p>Because Stefan is behind him, bringing the handle of a sword down upon him, intending to knock him out, and Julian <em>roars</em>.</p><p>He roars, because he is not having this snatched away from him—not now. Not when he is so close.</p><p>He is yanked out of the way, and Konkrat places himself in front of him, staring Stefan down.</p><p>“Julian,” Konkrat says, his voice steady. “Run.”</p><p>He hesitates. “Tell Justyn—”</p><p>He finds he cannot finish.</p><p>Konkrat risks looking behind him, and offers Julian a small smile. “I’m sure he knows,” he says, “but I’ll tell him anyway.”</p><p>Then Konkrat is unsheathing his sword, and Stefan has unsheathed his, and they meet in the middle, blades clashing as Julian slips past them both and sprints down the corridor, towards the smell of fresh air.</p><p><em>It was never about me</em>, he thinks numbly to himself and the cold air hits him and he nearly stumbles. The cloak is heavy, heavier than he is used to wearing, and he has to be careful that the satchel does not bounce overmuch and interfere with his movement.</p><p><em>It was never about me</em>.</p><p>The political machinations of that court had always flown right past Julian; he had known of course, that Stefan’s position in the lord’s seat had bene tenuous at best and that Konkrat had been the favourite to take over should the worst happen.</p><p>He shakes off the thoughts. Had he been used? Possibly—but it doesn’t matter any more, because he’s <em>running</em>, and he’s <em>free</em>.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He gets the fuck away.</p><p>He picks a new name.</p><p>Not Julian, nor Dandelion—though he does not give up his roots entirely. <em>Jaskier</em>, he names himself; a translation.</p><p>He is still just a child, without his Voice; a full-grown adult to these humans, but he finds himself yearning for the sea, for his pod, for his elders, for the knowledge they never got the chance to pass on.</p><p>He shrugs himself of that consideration, too. That is a problem for him to solve another time.</p><p>Jaskier travels until his food runs out, and then he finds a road and follows it until he finds a town, and—</p><p>And the looks of these humans, their appraisals and their touching and their voices are overwhelming. He finds himself shuddering when they brush against him and flinching away whenever somebody raises their voice. He makes it half a day in the town before he stumbles out again, exhausted.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He travels for days, and days and days, drinking from ponds and rivers and eating plants that don’t smell poisonous, until he cannot travel anymore.</p><p>There is a lake. There are kelpies in it, but they pay him no mind as he sheds his silks and slips inside and swims to the very bottom, and does his best to forget.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Geralt soon finds that Emilia, pretty and distracting and wealthy, is only trying to get into his breeches than offer him coin for the clearing of a nest of vampires.</p><p>He brushes her off as tactfully as he can, not wanting to abandon Jaskier to the night’s clutches—he had been so nervous about coming and he’d looked awful when they had arrived, and though the siren is probably fine Geralt still does not want to risk it.</p><p>Emilia looks disappointed, and presses him further, insistent, but backs off at a low growl and a flash of his eyes.</p><p>He watches her go with regret, and goes to find another drink.</p><p>He finds himself pleasantly inebriated by the time the party has wound down. Many of the guests are staggering back to the manor, where they have been offered rooms for the night; many still are clambering into carriages or atop horses and are disappearing off into the night.</p><p>Jaskier is taking his sweet time, it seems, but Geralt is more than happy to wait for his return in the company of the rather fine vintages the couple’s parents had kindly donated to the party.</p><p>He’s had worse jobs, he reflects.</p><p>Still, it becomes somewhat frustrating, as the candles burn low in their wicks and the bottles begin to empty, one by one. He keeps his eye out for the siren’s shimmering gold silks, ostentatious and eye-catching and Geralt surely should have spotted him by now. He could have had a quick tryst with Emilia between the trees, after all—the siren certainly has a lot to answer for.</p><p>Perhaps he had gone inside with the other guests.</p><p>Geralt slowly winds his way toward the manor, his eyes catching every rustle of movement, his ears pricking at every scrape. Most he dismissed easily enough, the rest warranted him to keep his head swivelling, as he picked out couples snuck off for illicit meetings in the shadows and small creatures not yet frightened off by the proceedings.</p><p>Nothing.</p><p>Geralt finds himself getting more irritated as he shoulders his way into the hall again. The candles are burnt low and the room is cast in shadow, the servants scurrying about in the semi-darkness as they clear away the great heaping piles of food left behind.</p><p>He stops one of them to ask after the night’s bard, and she curtsies low with a frightened smile fixed determinedly to her face and informs him that she hasn’t seen him. Neither has the next, nor the next.</p><p>Geralt makes a sweep of the corridors anyway, keeping his ear out for the siren behind any closed doors and instead receiving a rather <em>intimate </em>knowledge of the illicit couplings forged by drunkenness and the fact that, under the moonlight, even the most unfortunate look like a good idea. Geralt tries to maintain his disdain for the whole affair.</p><p>By the time he makes his way back outside, he is well and truly annoyed.</p><p>Jaskier is going to be kept on a <em>leash </em>from now on, he thinks viciously to himself.</p><p>The gardens have now emptied, and he walks the paths once more, searching for the troublesome siren amongst the manicured bushes, but—nothing.</p><p>Geralt is contemplating simply leaving, giving up the siren as a lost cause and going on his way, but—something stops him. Something in his gut tells him that the siren wouldn’t just <em>leave</em>—not after all the fuss he’d made at coming here in the first place, dragging Geralt along with him. So he keeps looking.</p><p>Eventually, he spies the siren’s lute, sitting innocuously against a table leg, no sign of Jaskier himself anywhere nearby.</p><p>It’s odd, though.</p><p>Jaskier protects that lute like a child. He treats it with more care than he treats himself, at times—always making sure it is covered in cloth and leather wrappings to protect it from scratches and the harshness of the weather; berating Geralt if he handles the instrument too roughly; replacing snapped strings with the utmost care and concentration.</p><p>And his lute is his livelihood.</p><p>He wouldn’t just <em>leave it lying around</em>.</p><p>Something sharp and stinging is twisting uncomfortably in Geralt’s gut, and he picks up the instrument, treating it as carefully as he can. His hands are made for killing, not for holding something so precious, but he imagines Jaskier won’t mind.</p><p>Wherever the siren is.</p><p>Geralt sighs, put-upon, and sniffs the lute, inhaling deeply—a siren’s scent is distinct amongst humans’, he finds, as he turns and follows the trail carefully.</p><p>He must look rather odd, he imagines, following the scent like a hound, though there are very few people about and he doesn’t care anyway. He’s had worse insults flung at him than <em>weird</em>.</p><p>He finds where Jaskier’s scent is converged upon by several other scents, surrounding and mixing with the siren’s, and then the group all move off together—off into the trees.</p><p>Geralt follows with a growing sense of dread.</p><p>His suspicions are confirmed when he reaches a small clearing where horses have obviously been tied, hoof prints and wisps of hay in evidence on the ground, as well as—</p><p>As well as blood.</p><p>Blood.</p><p><em>Blood</em>.</p><p><em>Jaskier’s </em>blood.</p><p>Geralt sees red.</p><p>Literally sees red—his vision goes dark and then crimson at the edges, and he has to grit his teeth and clench his jaw furiously to prevent himself from spitting out something vile and entirely unhelpful in every language he knows.</p><p>He clenches his fist, mindful of the lute he still carries, and talks himself down from punching the tree nearest to him—he’d probably knock it down, with the state he’s in, and that isn’t something he wants to be dealing with at present, not when—</p><p>Somebody <em>took Jaskier</em>.</p><p>It hits him, then—Geralt had promised to protect him. He’d promised Jaskier that he would be safe, that Geralt would watch his back—</p><p>Jaskier isn’t very safe now, he thinks; not when his blood is sprayed across the ground, and not when he has apparently been slung over the back of a horse and been made off with.</p><p>Geralt growls to himself. Somebody is going to pay.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Roach nickers to him when he returns to her. He takes the time to wrap Jaskier’s lute back up properly before he swings himself into the saddle and takes off; the siren would not be happy with him if anything happened to his beloved instrument, simply because he wasn’t there himself to take care of it. Geralt ignores the small voice whispering in his head about why that would matter.</p><p>He follows the hoofprints until they join a road, and then he follows the road down to a small village that has no idea what is about to hit it.</p><p>The townsfolk are relatively friendly, at first; it seems Jaskier’s songs about the witcher have reached here, and he is offered ale at first when he slams into the small tavern.</p><p>His rage is another presence entirely in the room, and it chokes the air, pressing the other patrons into the walls and filling their heads with fear. Geralt does not care.</p><p>“Horses,” he grunts to the barkeep, who looks like he’s about to shit himself. “Riders, and horses. A group of them. One of them would have had someone slung over the back, or maybe riding double. Where did they go?”</p><p>“East,” the man stammers out. “They went east. They stopped—they only stopped for some food, <em>please</em>, witcher—I have a family—”</p><p>Geralt does not listen to his words, because he is already out of the door. Roach is stood where he left her, resting a leg and eyes closed as she dozes.</p><p>He climbs back into the saddle, and tosses a piece of silver to the barkeep as the man cautiously comes to the door, watching him leave.</p><p>“For your trouble,” he grunts at the man, then wheels Roach around and presses his legs to her side, urging her into a trot and then to a canter, not stopping to see the man’s expression. He has more important things to worry about.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The next two towns point him east, too, and he follows the trail until he reaches a river, and a bridge, and another town that says they have not encountered the band.</p><p>Geralt shakes with anger, but the townspeople are certain: there have been no newcomers in the last two days.</p><p>He is forced to turn back and retrace his steps, scouring the road; past the river, he finds fresh tracks leading north, toward the mountains that ring the horizon like looming giants, and Roach huffs as he directs her that way.</p><p>It has been two days since the party, and Roach cannot go much further.</p><p>Her flanks are heaving and flecked with foam; sweat drips from her in great panes of slick; she holds her head low to the ground and flares her nostrils wide with each gulp of air.</p><p>She flicks her ears at him and lifts her head when she sees him come out of the tavern, shifting her weight—ready to go. Roach would run until she died, for him.</p><p>He isn’t going to ask her to.</p><p>There is a stable yard, behind the tavern, and he leads her there with her reins fisted in one hand, eyeing the shadows, listening to the huffs and shuffles of other horses stabled there.</p><p>He finds two young men—boys, really, gangly and not yet grown into their height, and they jump to attention at the sight of him.</p><p>“Sir—”</p><p>“Master witcher—”</p><p>The two break off and look at one another, silently arguing, before the shorter one apparently prevails and turns again to Geralt.</p><p>“Master witcher, how can we help you?”</p><p>Geralt is used to people fighting over who serves him—yet the feeling of them fighting <em>to </em>serve him, rather than to avoid him, is novel. He isn’t sure what he thinks of it.</p><p>“My horse,” he begins, and their eyes flick to Roach, equally disapproving expressions flitting over their faces as they take in her condition, before they school them into neutrality. Geralt is impressed. “I need to go further, but she’s done. Have you got a free stable?”</p><p>The taller boy begins to say something, but the shorter one cuts him off.</p><p>“Aye, we’ve got a box for her—and she’ll want feeding and rubbing down, no? We’ve got rugs to throw over her and for extra she’ll have a thick bed.”</p><p>Geralt nods. “Give her what she needs. You’ll have the coin when I’m back for her.”</p><p>The shorter one nods, apparently unwilling to argue with the witcher.</p><p>“Have you another horse?” Geralt asks, handing Roach over to the taller one. She goes with him easily enough, though she nips his sleeve when he takes off her bridle not as carefully as he should, banging the bit against her teeth.  </p><p>“Aye, master witcher, we’ll get you a fresh horse. There’s a few about that belong to us, not just on livery. Just make sure you return him in one piece, if you please,” the boy tells him, finishing with something of a sever expression, and Geralt only hums at the boy, refraining from growling too harshly. At least they care for the horses here.</p><p>They bring him a bay gelding, well-muscled and fit, taller than Roach but less stocky than she, his tack in good condition.</p><p>Geralt is still rattled somewhat from how he has pushed his mare, so when he swings into the bay’s saddle he makes sure to ascertain how the horse feels beneath him, and he gives the horse a good while to warm his muscles in walk and trot before he pushes it further.</p><p>He makes good time regardless, and he finds himself trotting into the next village before nightfall, kicking up rocks and dust, where he hears of the bard that had been there just this morning, singing of monsters and witchers and wicked things.</p><p>Geralt has been hard on their trail for three days—and he hasn’t stopped to rest. The longest he’s been in one place was to swap horses, while the men he’s following can’t have been going for that long without at least a few hours rest. He will have lost time when he had to double back, across the river, and then spent a morning scouting for tracks heading north, up the river, but he feels that he is still close on their tracks.</p><p>So close, in fact, that when he sets off from the village again he is fallen upon by what he originally assumes are particularly bold bandits, but on closer examination come to be rather too-well equipped to be simple highwaymen.</p><p>They know he’s after them, then.</p><p>He kills all but one with relish, slicing through them with well-kept steel and snarling furiously when they come at him all at once. Six on one is hardly fair; for a witcher, it is a game, and one that Geralt wins every time.</p><p>The last remaining man cries as Geralt advances upon him. Geralt feels not a twinge.</p><p><em>Perhaps I </em>am<em> just a butcher</em>, he thinks snidely to himself, before another voice shuts the first up with force. <em>You’re doing this for Jaskier</em>, it says, and something warm curls in his gut at the first, before he freezes. <em>But why?</em></p><p>He doesn’t have an answer.</p><p>His thoughts are tumultuous and senseless and he finds himself snarling aloud to silence them, and the man before him cowers further before pissing himself.</p><p>“Who hired you,” he growls, ignoring the smell and the wet patch that appears on the poor man’s breeches. This has happened more times than Geralt cares to remember, and he never knows how to react when it does; he always settles for ignoring the issue, sparing everyone involved the indignity of acknowledging it.</p><p>“The—lord, and lady, of Carembe,” the man bites out, eyeing Geralt’s steel and the dismembered bodies around him with a look of abject terror.</p><p>Geralt doesn’t know whether to feel insulted at the low quality mercenaries they’ve sent after him, or grateful for their apparent underestimation of him.</p><p>“Where the fuck is that,” he asks. “Never heard of it.”</p><p>“N—north of here. Two days’ ride. It’s—” the mercenary hesitates, and Geralt gives him the time. He’s afraid that if he pushes any further, the man will break. “You’ll have a hard time getting your siren out,” he decides eventually. “Stefan—the man who took him, who hired me, is lord there now, officially. It won’t be as easy getting him out.”</p><p>Then the man coughs up a truly impressive amount of blood, looks at it in absolute horror for the entire second it takes for Geralt to take his head off with one swing of his in sword, and all that he is left with is six cooling corpses.</p><p>“That went well,” he comments to himself, and the bay gelding nickers in agreement. Geralt shoots him a look.</p><p>Roach always knew when to keep quiet.</p><p>Geralt thinks on what the man said as he pulls himself back into the gelding’s saddle and urges it on. <em>Won’t be as easy getting him out</em>. What did that mean? Has Jaskier been here before? Why did he have to escape that time? Who had helped him?</p><p>The bay gelding is nimble over the ground and bears Geralt’s weight well, but even he begins to tire as night falls and his rider makes no sign of stopping.</p><p>The town he finds under darkness eyes him with suspicion, and they point him toward Carembe’s holdfast with open distrust. Geralt stops long enough only to swap horses again—a shaggy black stallion with enormous hooves and fire in his eyes—and then he’s riding hard for Carembe, eating in the saddle as he navigates the steadily-worsening terrain.</p><p>The stallion crosses the ground with a sure-footedness that Geralt wouldn’t have achieved on the bay gelding, nor even from Roach, and he finds himself grateful for it as night descends in full and he eyes the greyscale surroundings with distaste.</p><p>His night-vision is only so effective—more suited for hunting creatures, finely-tuned for picking up even the slightest movement in the darkness of lairs and caves and derelict castles, and he relies on the horse’s experience in crossing such terrain and leaves the reins well enough alone.</p><p>Their pace has slowed to a walk across the treacherous ground, and morning dawns on a horse that is rested enough to pick up the pace as soon as the loose rocks turn into something of a road, and Geralt puts his knees to the stallion’s flanks and urges him on.</p><p>The beast snorts, shakes out his mane, and obliges, cantering up the pace in great strides that swallow up the ground and the distance. Geralt is unwilling to push the creature further—generally, horses cannot gallop for extended periods of time, and prefer trotting or cantering depend on the individual for long distances.</p><p>Nonetheless, a great hall—Carembe, he hopes—is revealed behind a foothill as they draw nearer, her spires tall and forbidding and her main entrance ghastly and reminding him horribly of a mouth.</p><p>Under ordinary circumstances, Geralt admits that it likely would be just an ordinary hall, built of stone and timber and towers, with a grand entrance. But Jaskier is trapped in its belly—swallowed whole by the great beast, and if Geralt has to pull it down brick by brick then by the gods he will.</p><p>Because Jaskier was under his protection, and it is an insult to his prowess that anybody might take him, of course.</p><p>He doesn’t ride straight to the gate. Doing so would be satisfying—hunting down each and every fucking monster in the place and putting them to his sword, blood pooling as the light dies from their eyes—but it wouldn’t get him anywhere. By the time he found his—found Jaskier, whoever is holding him likely would have killed him already and this would all have been for naught.</p><p>He can’t let that happen.</p><p>Instead, he guides the stallion into the sparse population of trees that cover the foothills around the hall, dismounting the beast and patting him in appreciation. “Good lad,” he murmurs to the horse, who chuffs and nudges him with his nose.</p><p>Geralt secures him to one of the trees, leaving him fully saddled in case he needs to leave quickly.</p><p>He considers for a long time, about whether he ought to bring his silver sword along or not. It’s not for killing the human kind of monster, and likely will end up just being an extra burden weighing him down, but—if he comes across something else in there, he’d feel naked without it.</p><p>In the end, he leaves it where it is, strapped to his back beside the steel sword, and gives the stallion a farewell pat before turning to go.</p><p>He eyes the manor, a calculating calm taking over him.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He finds a side door, nearly hidden, embedding into the side of the terrain as it is, and it is a simple matter to force his way inside.</p><p>He is greeted with a horribly grim stone corridor—stone walls, stone ceiling, stone floor. This time, it doesn’t look like a mouth, nor a throat—it looks like the burrow an insect might make, worming its way into your skin, eating and chewing and swallowing until it is deeply engrained, so deep you cannot get it out—</p><p>He shakes off the feeling of unease and forges on. The scents here are stale, old—nobody has been down here in months, maybe years, it seems. His corridor seems to be the main track from which several smaller ways sprout off, down which more scents head; all of them converge, however, on his corridor, like tributaries to a river, and he follows it down to the source.</p><p>A staircase.</p><p>He can go down, or up; he chooses up, as humans seem not to have the habit of living in basements and he assumes Jaskier will be stored closer to where they converge, rather than hidden away from everybody.</p><p>He feels a growing unease as he ascends further up the stairs.</p><p>It’s quiet.</p><p><em>Too </em>quiet.</p><p>Geralt clenches his fist, wondering whether to draw his sword <em>now </em>or later. He pricks his ears, listening intently, but—nothing. No footsteps on the floor, not even a whisper of moving air, so he listens to his gut and delves deeper into the unnatural silence.</p><p>There is shattered wood splintered across the floor, almost like a wisps of straw, and it shifts beneath his boots as he walks over it, trying to remain silent. Banners and paintings that hung on the walls look eviscerated. There is broken glass and slivers of wax and the stone walls look untouched, but the mortar holding the bricks together looks damaged, with tiny cracks spiderwebbing across it; just dust, holding up these walls. He suppresses a shiver.</p><p>Every door he passes reveals empty rooms, empty corridors, empty stairwells, and the main doors at the end of the corridor reveal what appears to be an empty throne room—except for the blood, its scent heavy on the air, and he frowns and hums to himself and goes to investigate.</p><p>It’s a bloodbath.</p><p>Bodies lay <em>shredded </em>on the ground—and not by any discernible creature from what Geralt can gather. It looks simply as though they burst in their skin, like overripe fruit, strips of skin laying in ribbons across what are no longer people, no longer corpses—just piles of <em>meat</em>.</p><p>Geralt eyes them curiously; there must be some dark magic at play here, he thinks. It is the only explanation. No monster he knows of can do this.</p><p>The bodies here are well-dressed in blood-soaked silken finery: lords and ladies, running from whatever it was that killed them. In the doorway of one corner—the only open doorway—there lies what he can only assume is the body of a household guard, what with the scraps of armour that lay in pieces around the flesh. As though they simply exploded off him.</p><p>Geralt continues on, warily.</p><p>There are more bodies, more guards, and here he finds weapons, too—unused, by the looks of them. Geralt cannot imagine being shredded by something without at least sticking a blade into it, further lending credit to his ‘dark magic’ theory, and the prevailing silence is now almost a force upon his head, pressing down on him as an oppressive weight. It is bearable and awful at the same time.</p><p>He has not seen a single piece of furniture that isn’t in pieces on the floor.</p><p>He takes a left at the end of the corridor, and here the silence is broken by—something. Some quiet noise. Geralt cannot be sure what it is, far away as it sounds and with the silence wrapped around him as tightly as it is, forcing him to flinch away from any noise, but he finds himself walking toward that noise anyway, skirting bodies and ribbons of fabric as he goes.</p><p>He is glad he brought his silver sword, after all—it looks as though he is going to need it.</p><p>The noise becomes louder, becomes clearer, and he realises it is somebody <em>crying</em>.</p><p>Not just crying—sobbing.</p><p>Huge, grief-filled sobs, interspersed with panicked gulps of air as whoever it is hyperventilates, before they begin crying again, and something—something tugs at his heart strings, somewhere deep inside him, and it is such a foreign feeling he puts a hand to his chest to feel the slow beating of his heart and be sure that he is not injured.</p><p>He must make a noise, because the sobbing chokes off, and he frowns.</p><p>Geralt goes cautiously—oh so cautiously—as he nears the door at the end of the corridor where he believes the sobbing was coming from. Whoever is in there—perhaps they can tell him what happened. Who did this—<em>what </em>did this.</p><p>He leaves his swords in their sheathes, not wanting to alarm the person further, and nudges the door open with the toe on his boot, stepping inside with measured paces and schooling his face out of the horror that has slowly been drawing across it into something more neutral, he hopes, before looking upon the source of the sobbing.</p><p>It is Jaskier.</p><p>He looks…</p><p>He looks like he’s been through hell.</p><p>His hands are crimson with blood, dripping with it, and his fingers are webbed and tipped with lethal talons, and the blood slides off them in great sloughs. He is shirtless, and he has been beaten and whipped and—burnt, Geralt thinks, though it is difficult to tell.</p><p>His skin is a monument to human cruelty, and Geralt finds himself baring his teeth at the sight of it.</p><p>On the floor are three men and a woman, and Geralt can tell that Jaskier killed all of these by hand, ripping out their throats with talons and fangs and pure will. There is wood splintered across the floor in here, too, and Geralt wonders just what they had Jaskier tied to.</p><p>Leather manacles and a leather collar are tied still about Jaskier’s throat, his wrists, and Geralt almost keens when he sees them.</p><p>Jaskier lifts his head, and locks eyes with Geralt.</p><p>He opens his mouth to talk, but he has to cough once, twice, before any words come out, and when they do they are rusted, forced, and Geralt winces to hear them.</p><p>“I screamed, and this—this happened,” the siren indicates the room, the <em>destruction</em>.</p><p>“You’re a siren,” Geralt gets out. Jaskier nods numbly.</p><p>“I killed,” Jaskier says.</p><p>Geralt nods, his mind running over all the bodies he saw, the pure fury that ripped through them. He catalogues the torture inflicted on Jaskier. He wonders what else they did to him, have done to him in the past, and how they paid for it. He grits his teeth.</p><p>He unsheathes his silver sword.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Geralt drops his silver sword.</p><p>Really, he throws it definitively to the side, and it lands with a clatter that cuts through the silence that had descended upon them both when he had first unsheathed it. Jaskier looks at him with wide, frightened eyes, and suddenly—</p><p>--suddenly that heavy, oppressive silence lifts off him, sucking back to wherever it came from with almost an audible <em>pop</em>, and Jaskier slumps, defeated.</p><p>“Jaskier?” Geralt cautiously asks, dropping his shoulders and bowing his head and generally doing what he can to make himself appear smaller.</p><p>“You’re going to kill me,” the siren mumbles out, and Geralt frowns.</p><p>“I’m not,” he says, “I promise.”</p><p>“You—” Jaskier looks up at him then, and the <em>terror </em>on his face is so palpable Geralt isn’t sure what to do with it, but he’s more alarmed by the acceptance mingled with it. “I’ve had enough of promises,” the siren says, and it is almost like he’s talking to himself. Geralt doesn’t know what to do with this, either.</p><p>“Jaskier, you need a healer,” he tries then, and Jaskier shakes his head.</p><p>“I’m a monster,” he says simply. “Healers can’t help me.”</p><p>Leaving aside the ‘<em>I’m a </em>monster’ issue, Geralt wracks his brains. “A sorcerer, then,” he says finally, “some of them are good. I know a sorceress—Triss Merigold, she’ll—”</p><p>“—want nothing to do with me, Geralt. Do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed?”</p><p><em>No more than me.</em> Geralt feels a small smile flickering at his lips. “Dozens,” he tells the siren, “maybe hundreds. Everyone in this fucking place, everyone who hurt you—”</p><p>But Jaskier is looking at him with a horrified expression, and Geralt cuts himself off.</p><p>“I didn’t mean—” Jaskier begins, his voice pitched low, “—I didn’t mean to kill <em>all </em>of them. Just—just enough that I could get out. I can’t—I can’t—” he breaks off, his breathing picking up until Geralt is really, truly worried for him—he’s been through so much, and if he starts panicking now he’ll hurt himself, Geralt is sure.</p><p>He takes a step forward, and Jaskier scrambles up, wincing sharply and letting out an explosive huff of air as all his wounds catch up to him. He looks for a moment like he might fall down again, and Geralt inches forward, ready to catch him, but the siren’s head snaps up and he backs away, hissing through his fangs.</p><p>“<em>Don’t touch me</em>,” he grits out, his voice a musical whine, a touch of Song filtering through and Geralt shakes off the compulsion with some effort. He has never seen Jaskier as a threat before, not once, but now he is hurt and frightened and has just murdered a castle full of people and he doesn’t look to be in his right mind, and Geralt is likely very close to pushing the siren over the edge.</p><p>“Jaskier,” he says quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. I <em>won’t</em>.”</p><p>“I don’t believe you,” Jaskier whines out.</p><p>Geralt points at his sword, the one he dropped. “There—there is your proof. I won’t touch you with it. It has never been for you before and it isn’t for you now.”</p><p>Jaskier pauses, then, and looks at the sliver of silver lying on the floor.</p><p>“But I—” he breaks off, swaying, and Geralt stays where he is, as much as it kills him. “I <em>killed people</em>, Geralt.”</p><p>“Monsters,” Geralt says. “You killed monsters.”</p><p>“Not all of them.”</p><p>“They let this happen to you—and I’d wager they knew it was happening to you, Jaskier, don’t look like that at me. They’re <em>monsters</em>. I should know, Jaskier.”</p><p>The siren curls in on himself, breathing harshly and wincing with every minute movement. Geralt wants so desperately to—<em>reassure </em>him, or something; to take away that hurt and wipe away any misery still lingering. He wants to kill anybody who has ever laid his hands on Jaskier.</p><p>Geralt, very carefully, lowers himself until he is on his knees, hands braced on his thighs. His sword, steel and strapped to his back still, clangs against the floor and Jaskier does not even flinch.</p><p>“Jaskier?” he breathes.</p><p>The siren lifts his head and takes in the witcher, kneeling for him. “Please don’t kill me,” he says, and stands. Geralt nods.</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>Jaskier takes a step toward Geralt; he finds he can barely breathe as emotions he does not name claw in his belly, in his chest, in his throat. He holds himself very, very still.</p><p>“Please don’t kill me,” Jaskier whispers, and in a burst of energy and speed Geralt hadn’t even been aware he possessed, he dives past Geralt and out of the room, down the hallway, down the stairs.</p><p>Geralt barely pauses to snatch up the sword he dropped—silver is expensive, after all—before he’s running after Jaskier, eyeing the skid marks in the blood that coats the floor like a grisly sheen of wax, where the siren has skidded on evidence of his own destruction. The stinging smell of fear permeates <em>everything</em>. Geralt shakes as it curls against his skin.</p><p><em>“Jaskier!” </em>he finds himself shouting, a note of desperation in his voice he has never heard before. “Jaskier, <em>wait!”</em></p><p>There is no reply.</p><p>He follows the fresh scent of siren, sprinting down hallways and staircases with no sense of where he’s going, if it is the same way as the way he came in. Jaskier is <em>fast</em>.</p><p>He reaches the first tunnel he’d entered, from which tributaries spring like leaks and he has to be sure he is treading the right path—and now he realises that he is also following the smell of <em>blood</em>, because of course—Jaskier had run through it, at the beginning, and while the blood on the bottom of his shoes is no longer leaving prints like it must have done at the beginning, the scent of it is still heavy on the air.</p><p>Geralt follows like a hound to a scent.</p><p>He follows it all the way outside, into fresh air and the open world, and the smell and sound of running water hits him like a revelation.</p><p>His stallion calls to him as he sprints by, to the edge of the river, where the siren has dived beneath the surface and no doubt disappeared downstream.</p><p><em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The stallion does not mind the water, thank the gods, as Geralt rides him through the shallows where he can, watching the riverbed. Where Jaskier first dove into the water, blood and filth came off him and settled like oil on water, but the traces have long since disappeared and Geralt is left with checking every inch of the stream to be sure that Jaskier has not settled there to lick his wounds.</p><p>Where he cannot traverse through the river, he is forced higher up on the banks, and Geralt’s hands shake where he grips the reins. This is a nightmare.</p><p>Eventually, the rocky terrain morphs into grassy flatland, and he is forced to turn away from the river, to the town where the bay gelding is stabled. The stallion nudges him affectionately as he makes the trade, and Geralt slaps his neck in goodbye with no small amount of regret.</p><p>“He’s a fine horse,” he tells the wide-eyed stablehand who accepts him, and the boy who hands over the gelding snorts.</p><p>“Aye,” the youth says. “One of our nicest. And now he’s been ridden by the great witcher, Geralt of Rivia, so any offspring he throws will be worth twice as much, unless his master chooses to sell, and he’ll fetch a pretty penny at market.”</p><p>Geralt does not answer, occupied as he is in transferring his saddlebags to the gelding and mounting up; he leaves them in a cloud of dust and does not think on how Jaskier has reversed his reputation in the short time they have travelled together—on this side of the Continent, anyway.</p><p>The gelding covers the ground easily and Geralt has barely lost the morning by the time he reaches the river banks again, trotting through the shallows. This horse dislikes the water with a passion, barely agreeing to even wetting his hooves, so Geralt is forced to ride right at the very waterline, and at times he even dismounts to check under overhands and the like.</p><p>It is frustratingly slow going.</p><p>He does not stop that night, nor the night after; he cannot afford to lose any more time, not when Jaskier is so much more lithe through the water than Geralt could ever be on horseback, on land.</p><p>One thing that worries him is that there are so few fish in these waters, and those that he has spotted are small and dart quickly into the water plants that grow copiously on the river bed. Jaskier cannot be eating well—and he <em>needs </em>to be eating well, after all that he has suffered.</p><p>Geralt finds himself torn between hoping against hope that he finds the siren before he does any harm to himself, and hoping that Jaskier makes it all the way to the sea, where he will find food and shelter and perhaps company aplenty, and he will never have to suffer at the hands of humans again.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They have him for a day.</p><p>A <em>day</em>.</p><p>Just a day—and it is enough to break him, it seems; Julian clings to the post with everything he has and repeats in his head, over and over, <em>I am more than what they have made me</em>.</p><p>He is Jaskier. He is Geralt’s Jaskier—and Geralt is coming for him, he’s sure.</p><p>Geralt <em>has </em>to be coming for him. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he doesn’t.</p><p>For the first time in a long time, Julian-Jaskier remembers Dandelion. He remembers swimming with his pod.</p><p>He remembers his mother.</p><p>He wonders what she would think of him, of <em>this</em>.</p><p>If she always knew that this would happen, and that is why she killed herself.</p><p>Or if she had simply known that he would leave her, and she couldn’t stand to be alone.</p><p>Either way, he remembers her—her soft voice, and her hands running through his hair, and her laugh as they dove through the waves together.</p><p>He remembers how she looked, curled among the coral, and he remembers being left alone after they had buried her, and he wonders if he had always been destined to arrive here—</p><p>Here, in this nightmare, with these humans.</p><p>He gags on them as they force themselves upon him. He screams as they take him, again and again, and split his skin apart with their whips, and he wonders if this time they’ll kill him.</p><p>He hopes they’ll kill him.</p><p>He breaks under their treatment; it seems that, after years of having only the kelpies for company, and then months of having a witcher’s protection, he has become soft and weak and fragile.</p><p>He curls far, far inside himself, and repeats, <em>you are more than what they have made you</em>.</p><p>It takes hours for him to forget even his name.</p><p>And then one of them throws water over him—it might have been Kazimierz, or Andrjez, or Stefan (and hadn’t Kondrat killed him? What had happened? The siren isn’t told)—and his face is grabbed in one large, unforgiving hand, and he is forced to look upon a face he that shifts and morphs before him.</p><p>“Tell me,” the voice begins, terrifyingly conversationally, “did you expect to escape us forever? You’ve been ours since the beginning, Julian. You’ve had a lovely holiday, you and your witcher whore—but now it’s time to come home.”</p><p>Julian—Jaskier—<em>Dandelion</em> licks at the corner of his mouth, where blood has collected. “Geralt,” he says hoarsely, “—Geralt isn’t a <em>whore</em>. And he’s—” he has to break off to cough, and he spits out several mouthfuls of blood and <em>other fluids </em>before is obliged to continue, “—he’s going to come here, and he’s going to kill you all.”</p><p>He laughs, then—a broken, hollow thing, a few huffs of air, but it is defiance enough that the man before him cracks a hand across his face.</p><p>“Your <em>witcher whore</em>,” someone hisses, “will be captured, and we’ll take him apart, too—just as we will you. And then we’ll set him loose for the hounds to follow, and let him run until he’s nearly dead. And then we’ll bring him to you, and by that point, I <em>promise you</em>, Julian, you will be ours—and you’ll kill him yourself.”</p><p>The man—Stefan. It is Stefan.</p><p>Stefan looks so smug, so <em>arrogant</em>, so <em>completely sure </em>that he is right, that Julian—Dandelion—<em>Jaskier </em>snaps.</p><p>He snaps.</p><p>He snaps.</p><p>He spits in Stefan’s face, and then he opens his mouth and he <em>roars</em>.</p><p>It is not quite a Song—not quite. It is <em>more</em>.</p><p>It is a primal piece of him, buried so deeply that he is sure nobody in his immediate line of ancestry has ever uncovered it, and he loses himself to it—allows it to take over him completely.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier is underwater, and yet he is on fire.</p><p>He has never burnt this hot in his <em>life</em>.</p><p>Wounds, imaginary wounds—or rather, not imaginary, just inflicted on a different skin—burn white-hot with pain and hot tears run rivulets down his cheeks. His tail is both a dragging weight and a brilliant freedom as he shoots through the water, winding around corners and boulders and the grasping fingers of water-plants, and his arms and hands are scored a dozen and more times over by roots and kicked-up river-rocks.</p><p>Blood clings to him like a bruise.</p><p>He swims, because he does not know what else to do. He knows that Geralt will be chasing him—whether to kill him, or to save him, Jaskier does not know. He knows only that he does not <em>want </em>to be saved.</p><p>Stefan tore through him as a bull through a fence. He <em>shattered </em>Jaskier, as he hadn’t managed before, and then he’d wrapped a collar about his siren’s throat and squeezed.</p><p>And Jaskier had just… lost it. He’d lost it. He’d <em>lost it</em>.</p><p>He’d screamed, and the chains bolted to the wooden post had burst apart like a rock through glass, scattered into a thousand slivers of iron chips and glinting on the ground like fresh fallen snow. The post itself had toppled like a column of water, splashing across the ground in a cascade of blood-crusted splinters.</p><p>Stefan had burst, too. His skin had split and the blood had poured, as though he were overripe fruit. His eyes had toppled from his skull and his teeth had rolled across the ground like coins. His bones shivered out of place and his innards tumbled apart, a grisly, tangled nest of guts and organs.</p><p>The others—Jaskier hadn’t looked.</p><p>He will never forget watching Stefan’s face pull apart, like the peel of an apple, like the skinning of a deer, his eyes falling like a worm being plucked from its hole.</p><p>He will never forget the awful, delirious satisfaction that bolted through him at hearing his scream.</p><p>He swims to get away from Geralt; he swims to get away from Julian. He swims to get away from that awful hall—he’d never even learnt its <em>name</em>—and he swims to get away from Jaskier, because Jaskier was the name he had worn when that satisfaction had settled in his gut like a bellyful of good food and ale and a decent night’s rest, warming and heartening and succouring, and he doesn’t deserve the name Jaskier any longer.</p><p>Jaskier is laughter and smiles and singing. Jaskier is a good tune and a tavern full of cheer. Jaskier is Geralt’s friend.</p><p>Geralt kills monsters. Geralt can’t be friends with a creature who has just screamed a hundred or so people to death. Not just to death—Jaskier can’t get the utter <em>destruction </em>out of his mind; every one of them look as though they’d been torn to pieces by some wild, feral beast: the kind of beast Geralt is routinely hired to put down.</p><p>And so, as the miles slip by and the days slip by and blood and tears slip by, Jaskier slips off his name, too, until he’s just another siren, just a blur of blue scales and pale skin and teeth and talons, and he heads for the coast with every bit of energy he can spare.</p><p>He should have known, of course, that he was never going to make it.</p><p>He’s too hurt. His human form aches, and soon the damage done to him there begins to leech into his siren’s skin; his throat closes up and he chokes on blood, and is forced to stop, clawing at his mouth and his gills and screaming—<em>screaming</em>—for air, until he has coughed up huge globules of blood that melt away in the river, out of sight, out of mind.</p><p>He continues on.</p><p>Once he is free of this freshwater, and he is out in the sea, he can concentrate on healing—but for now, he has to flee.</p><p>The shattered bones in his legs reverberate like the din of a hundred drums, crashing together, or perhaps a hunt, thousands of hooves on hard ground, the baying of hounds at their heels. They jostle together, in the skin he does not wear, and he <em>screams </em>in the water even as he swims through the pain, swims away from the pain, pretends that those legs are not his.</p><p>It doesn’t quite work, but he doesn’t stop.</p><p>The pain inside him, from where Stefan and Andrzej and Kazimierz and their boys had their fun with him, is a deep and throbbing thing, and he swims from that, too. He swims because he cannot do more than what he has already done. He swims because they have paid their price, the <em>ultimate </em>price, and he cannot bring himself to regret the pain they must have felt, when he ripped through them with his death-knell, his Song heralding their deaths. He swims because he must get away from it all if he wants to stay sane.</p><p>So he aches, and he pushes it down—as far down and away from himself as he can, with all the strength that he can muster.</p><p>He feels himself weakening. He hasn’t eaten, not for days. He hasn’t rested, not for days. He needs both, and soon—but the ocean is so far away still, and there is a witcher after him—</p><p><em>To help</em>, a treacherous little voice whispers, and he sobs. It would be so, so easy to give up.</p><p>But he can’t. Because he’s a monster.</p><p><em>Not quite</em>, that voice whispers, sounding like Geralt, his low grumble a soothing song in Jaskier’s ear, and he presses a fist to his mouth; his despair is a broken thing, a terrible, whining mewl that threatens to rip from his throat, and he can’t let it, because it would feel like giving up.</p><p>He’s a monster.</p><p>In all of the stories, the monsters lose—and this siren loses.</p><p>He fails.</p><p>His body gives out.</p><p>He finds himself squinting his eyes against the terrible glare of the sun against the water, and the next thing he knows, his eyes are closing and his head is dropping and then—</p><p>It’s only a small thing; just a twitch of muscle, along his back, but he finds his spine twisting simultaneously and then he is catapulting over himself, spinning too fast for him to regain his bearings, and he flings himself into the banks of the river with as much momentum as he is capable of.</p><p>He is stunned. It feels like everything in him is broken.</p><p>He’s <em>broken</em>. He has lost.</p><p><em>You are lost</em>, that voice whispers, <em>but Geralt will find you</em>.</p><p><em>I don’t want him to find me</em>, he lies to himself, and he closes his eyes and slips deeply into unconsciousness, his blood seeping into the waters around him.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The night sky is an explosion of lights when Geralt finds Jaskier.</p><p>They reflect on the river’s flat surface, making him difficult to see—but the blood that turns the water inky black is impossible to miss, as powerful as it is in his nose, his lungs each time he takes a breath, and it turns the stars into red omens as they flicker over the surface.</p><p>Geralt dismounts the bay gelding. The horse huffs, and bends its head to graze, its sides heaving. It eyes the water with disdain.</p><p>Geralt slides off his weapons, and the topmost layer of armour—and then his shirt, and boots, and breeches, too. He dives under the water and is rewarded with a mouthful of blood for his trouble.</p><p>The blood clings to his skin, his hair, and he cannot see through it—but a fin brushes his shoulder, and he grasps blindly at it. He swims further, downwards, until his fingers hit skin, and then he braces himself against the riverbed and he wraps his arm around the siren and he kicks off, upward, hard.</p><p>Jaskier is heavy. Geralt isn’t sure he can make it.</p><p>He does, finally; he breaches the surface with an ungainly splash and a string of curses, echoing in the night like a flight of fowl, tittering on the wind. He winces and hauls the siren to the river’s edge.</p><p>The gelding watches them as Geralt heaves first Jaskier, then himself, into the soft mud at the water’s edge, and it snorts when Geralt stands up in the mud and looks at him with narrowed eyes.</p><p>“You could come here and help, you know,” he tells the horse. “I’ve more than enough straps to tie them around Jaskier and get you to pull him up.”</p><p>The gelding snorts again, before putting his head down and defiantly pulling up another mouthful of grass.</p><p><em>Bastard horse</em>, Geralt thinks sourly. <em>Roach, or even that black stallion, would have helped</em>.</p><p>He wraps his arms under Jaskier’s and pulls, none too gently, dragging the siren until he is laying more in the grass, and then he sits back and has a proper look at him.</p><p>The siren’s ribs are cracked, and his spine is—well. It’s a good thing he’s unconscious, Geralt muses, else he’d be dealing with a hysterical siren on top of it all.</p><p>Blood dribbles from his mouth, his ears, his eyes, his nose. His arms are lacerated with small stripes of red and where he hasn’t been sliced open, he is bruised. His fins are slashed, too—they feel like silk under Geralt’s hands, and are translucent enough that he can see black veins running through them, like the leaves of a tree—or the petals of a flower, more appropriately.</p><p>He sweeps a hand down Jaskier’s side.</p><p>His thoughts are tumultuous, and he is careful not to identify any of the emotions that threaten to overpower him.</p><p>He needs to get Jaskier help—and then, and <em>only </em>then, will he allow himself to break down.</p><p>He can do this.</p><p>He needs a sorceress. No ordinary healer will be able to help—not when Jaskier’s bones are in so many pieces, and not when he is as frightened and distrustful and skittish as he is. Geralt isn’t sure upon whom he can call.</p><p>His first thoughts are of Triss Merigold, but he isn’t sure she is experienced enough to help him with this—she’s young, for a sorceress, and has spent more of her time in court than out of it, and she is better versed in politics and ruling that in healing. She likely could stabilise Jaskier, but she couldn’t heal him. Not fully.</p><p>Then he thinks of Yennefer, but—</p><p>It wouldn’t be fair, to either of them, for him to call on her. Not after how he had left it; her in tears, mountains shaking and trees splintering around her, a storm crackling over their heads and fire singing the ground. She had nearly brought the world down upon him, and for love he would have let her, because she wanted a child and he couldn’t give her one. <em>Wouldn’t </em>give her one.</p><p><em>It’s a stupid idea, Yen</em>, he had told her, and she had already been cracked—but that had broken her, and he’d <em>meant </em>for it to break her, and they had snarled at one another, a wolf facing off against a mountain cat, and it’s a wonder the Continent hadn’t cracked in two between them, with her magic battering against his, his will the only defence against her pure <em>chaos</em>—</p><p>He shuts the memory down, forcing it to the recesses of his mind.</p><p>The siren in his hands is fragile.</p><p>He is not built for fragility. He is a greatsword, a wolf, a <em>witcher</em>, and he cannot be kind—</p><p>But Jaskier needs kindness, now, and Geralt has never stood down from a challenge.</p><p>He runs a hand down Jaskier’s side again.</p><p>The siren has suffered so much, and Geralt is determined not to make him suffer further.</p><p>He thinks of Yennefer again.</p><p>He cannot bring his mouth to shape her name, convinced that it will break in his throat and all of the grief will come tumbling out, but she hears him anyway.</p><p>“Geralt,” she says, lilac and gooseberries, a mountain cat, chaos and power, and he crumples over Jaskier’s body.</p><p><em>“Help me</em>,” he begs. “Help<em> him, </em>please, Yen—I don’t—”</p><p>“Shh,” she says, brushing a hand over his head, stroking his hair. “Come on.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt has rarely felt this bone-deep weariness.</p><p>He’s been tired, yes—exhaustion to the point of passing out, even, is a regular occurrence for him. But that is an infliction of the flesh. That is his brain and his muscles protesting until they forcibly take over and shut down, dropping him where he stands, forcing him to rest until he can stand back up and keep fighting.</p><p>He is used to the kind of tired that creeps up on you, over days and weeks and months, where each time he meditates, or even sleeps, it has less and less effect, until one day he finds himself sleeping through an entire two days before he wakes, ready to pick up his sword.</p><p>He is accustomed, even, to the exhaustion that comes of having too little sleep and too little food and too little cover from wind and rain and snow, until his mind crawls away under a big blue sky with wildflowers in his nose, and his body takes over and walks him and Roach to the nearest tavern, and barters with the innkeeper for a day and a night in a room, and a bellyful of food and a hot bath to warm him. More than once he has gone to sleep somewhere and woken up in a place entirely different.</p><p>But <em>this </em>weariness—the tiredness of life itself, where he wonders what it would be like to just <em>not exist anymore</em>—this is something he is unused to, and he is too tired to do anything <em>with </em>it.</p><p>He stands in Yennefer’s home—or rather, whichever townhouse she is currently residing in, having evicted the hapless former residents with some no doubt nasty concoction or spell—and breathes in the smell of lilac and gooseberries, and wishes that he could perhaps just lie down and not get up again for a very, very long time.</p><p>He can’t, of course.</p><p>But oh, how he wishes he could.</p><p>The acrid smell of magic permeates the air and makes him somewhat dizzy, so he gravitates to the kitchen, and sets about making a stew. It is simple fare, scavenged from her cupboards, but he can make it well and it keeps well and he needs to concentrate on his hands while they are this uncooperative—while he has had such little sleep—so he cannot think too hard about other, more unpleasant things.</p><p>The smell of beef and vegetables stewing under a mountain of herbs and spices draws Yennefer away from Jaskier’s bedside, where she has been watching over the siren with some consternation for two days now, since she portaled him and Geralt into her home.</p><p>“He’s no better,” is the first thing she says, before he can ask, “but he isn’t any worse, either, which is a good thing—it means he won’t <em>get </em>worse, after this point.”</p><p>Geralt feels a weight slip from him that he hadn’t even been aware he was carrying.</p><p>She eyes him, before moving to the dinner that is stewing over the flame, taking the ladle and stirring, idly.</p><p>“He was in a bad way,” she continues. “Both of his forms. His human form—Geralt—” she breaks off, as though unsure how to tell him. Geralt doesn’t think he has ever heard Yennefer sound <em>unsure</em>, and it sounds wrong to his ears—like an instrument that is out of tune, or somebody going downstairs who has missed a step, or a horse galloping without that final beat. It puts him off balance.</p><p>“He was tortured,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. He wonders when that happened.</p><p>“Do you know why?” she asks him then, and she is more blunt, now. It is better.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Yennefer hums, before dropping the ladle and turning to face him properly. “I’ve fixed his siren form completely. His spine was—” her face twists in a wince, and he nods. “His human form… I can only fix so much of the damage. The lashes will leave scars, though I’ve done what I can for them. I don’t know what they used, but the skin is rebelling against any poultice I put on it, and I don’t want to force it closed with magic—not when I don’t know exactly how he’ll react to it. He’s human and siren, and I don’t know enough about them when they’re mixed to do much more than I have.”</p><p>Relief floods through him like ice. “Anything—everything you’ve done is—it’s <em>more </em>than enough, Yennefer, I can’t even thank you enough—”</p><p>“Stop,” she cuts him off neatly. He stops. “Geralt,” Yennefer says, looking square at him, her violet eyes speaking volumes that he can’t read. He waits. “Geralt, I loved you. With everything. But you and I…”</p><p>“Were chaos, unrestrained,” he says, a small smile twitching at his lips, remembering. “Yennefer, I know. I love you too. I still do. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you. But I hurt you, too much, and I think I’d do it again—by accident. So I can’t be with you.”</p><p>Yennefer is smiling, too, now—not with her mouth, though she looks like she wants to. No; her eyes are sparkling, and her shoulders have dropped from their defensive hunch, and her face is bright and warm and lovely.</p><p>“My word, witcher,” she says, and now she slips and a small smile curls at the corner of her mouth. “When did you get so eloquent?”</p><p>“I’ve spent months on the road with an aspiring bard,” he tells her with the faint beginnings of a grin. “He’s quite… vociferous.”</p><p>She’s smiling properly now, and he can see it: they are much, <em>much </em>better as friends.</p><p>“That won’t be done for a while,” Yennefer breaks the comfortable silence that had begun to develop, and indicates the pot over the fire. “Go to bed. I’ll wake you when it’s done; there’s no sense having you pass out when there’s no need for it.”</p><p>He hesitates, wondering if there is still more to say, but she shoos him out of the kitchen and up the stairs, where there is a warm bed and thick quilts and he is asleep the minute his head is on a pillow.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Yennefer wakes him some hours later, and he stumbles downstairs with an uncharacteristic lack of coordination while ignoring her laughing behind her hand.</p><p>Jaskier still hasn’t woken.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” she tells him while they eat together. “He’s magically exhausted, too—from what you told me, that was a huge chunk of power he expelled, all at once. Even I’d struggle to come back from doing that without a decent meal and bath, and he didn’t even get those—instead he spent three days using every last bit of energy he had. I’d <em>rather </em>he spent a few extra days sleeping and recovering.”</p><p>Geralt grunts in acknowledgment. Yes, he’d rather Jaskier be okay—but he wants to <em>hear </em>that he’s okay, too, and he can’t manage that while the siren is soundly sleeping.</p><p>“Tell me about him,” Yennefer asks, and Geralt swallows the bread he has been working and looks at her.</p><p>“The first time we met, a kelpie was about to drown me,” he begins, and the sorceress frowns at him.</p><p>“A kelpie? Surely you can take down a simple kelpie.”</p><p>He grunts. “I didn’t know the kelpie was <em>there</em>. And I <em>had </em>taken it down—it was already dead. I was just stuck in it.” He breaks off to glare at her when she begins laughing, and continues with a scowl when she motions at him to move on.</p><p>“He dragged me out of the water. And then I punched him in the face when I woke up.”</p><p>Yennefer is laughing again.</p><p>“Sorry—go on,” she snorts, “—I promise I’ll be quieter. He sounds <em>great</em>.”</p><p>So he talks. He talks about Jaskier’s singing, and his lute, and the adventures they had had; he talks about Jaskier’s songs (“I’ve heard some of those! They’re <em>good!</em>” Yennefer exclaims, humming out a tune that has Geralt throwing up his hands in exasperation) and how the siren had gotten into trouble almost <em>constantly</em>. He talks about the friendship he had struck up with Roach.</p><p>Yennefer listens, a smile on her face, and she realises as he goes on that Geralt has absolutely no idea how he feels about the siren. Her smile becomes conspiratorial.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It takes three days more for Jaskier to wake, and he does so with his typical flare, in that he nearly scratches Yennefer’s eyes out when he wakes to her bending over him, and then proceeds to knock over every single piece of furniture in his path as he sprints out of the room and down the stairs, landing on a very surprise Geralt, who had gotten up to go and investigate the noise.</p><p>“I’m <em>very sorry</em>,” he says, for perhaps the hundredth time, as Yennefer dabs once more at her face, wiping away the last beads of blood. She’d healed herself almost immediately, but hadn’t cleaned the blood away, and—well, head wounds bleed <em>profusely</em>, as Jaskier and Geralt had found once the witcher had herded the siren upstairs to find a sorceress with blood pouring from her face.</p><p>All in all: not the best introduction they might have hoped for, but it was all so hopelessly <em>Jaskier </em>that Geralt finds himself surprised that he had expected anything less.</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Yennefer tells him, her tone now somewhat exasperated. She has reassured the siren over and over that he need not apologise, that he had reacted from instinct and that, after what he’s been through, she’s glad he had the presence of mind to defend himself. It hasn’t done much. “I’m just glad you’re alright. How do you feel?”</p><p>Jaskier manages to curl further in on himself, which is a feat, considering how hunched over he already is in the armchair. A steaming mug of spiced tea sits on the table next to him, untouched; Yennefer had placed it beside him some time ago in the hope it might calm him down, and has kept it hot for him while she cleans herself up in the mirror, but he has refrained from allowing himself even that small comfort. She finds her heart aching for him.</p><p>“I’m—confused,” the siren says in a small voice, and she nods slightly. Fair enough.</p><p>“I’m Yennefer,” she tells him, “of Vengerberg. I’m—an old friend of Geralt’s.”</p><p>“You were lovers,” Jaskier looks up at her, a question in his eyes. “But I thought—”</p><p>“It… we’re not together any more. We weren’t exactly <em>good </em>for one another. But we’re still friends,” she explains, and Jaskier looks like he’s not sure what to do with the information. She can practically see him filing it away, to be examined later. “And you’re Geralt’s friend,” she continues, because the witcher had impressed on her the need to keep repeating that, and she hadn’t questioned it. Geralt isn’t exactly good with his <em>feelings</em>, and helping him in this fits perfectly with her plans. “You’re his friend, so I agreed to help you. I brought you here, to my home—” she refrains from mentioning that it technically belongs to a merchant who is currently pursuing a sudden and all-consuming passion for fishing, far off the coast, “—and you’ve been here nearly a week, healing.”</p><p>Jaskier works his jaw, turning the information over in his mind. <em>A week</em>.</p><p>A thought suddenly occurs to him. “Healing—am I really—I mean, I remember swimming—” he breaks off, fear colouring his voice and his scent as he remembers the pain, the desperation, and the awful <em>snap</em>—</p><p>“You’re completely healed,” she reassures him, turning to kneel in front of him. He doesn’t look like he quite believes her. “Your spine, it—um. Was in a few pieces,” she says tactfully, and he flinches very slightly, but it’s a better reaction than she had thought to get and so she pushes on, “but I’ve repaired it and you’ll have no lasting effects. All the lacerations on your arms have healed up nicely as well. There were a few… tears, in your fins, and I’ve done my best to knit them together—”</p><p>“They’ll heal naturally,” Jaskier murmurs, cutting her off. He looks deep in thought, as though taking stock of himself, imagining himself in that other form and checking himself over. Yennefer allows him the quiet.</p><p>“Your… injuries, in this body,” she broaches the subject gently, now that he looks less like he is going to bolt, “were… extensive. I’ve healed the damage to your—well. I’m sure you can feel it,” she says delicately, and he blushes and looks away, reaching for the tea and taking a sip of it to avoid looking at her. She coughs politely and moves on. “In any case, I’ve healed the internal and external damage, but any psychological damage… I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise.”</p><p>“This—I’ve dealt with it before,” he says into his mug, still very pointedly not looking at her, and she allows herself the rage that bubbles up at his words. <em>Who the </em>fuck <em>would hurt him?</em> She quickly schools herself again before he can take notice.</p><p>“Nevertheless,” she says, “it’s—an awful, awful thing, Jaskier, and—”</p><p>“I know,” he cuts her off, looking up finally and meeting her gaze with a calmly neutral expression, and she finds herself impressed with his collection. If it had happened to <em>her</em>, she would be burning down the <em>world </em>right about now. “I know. I’ll be alright.”</p><p>She decides to leave it. This is something he has dealt with before; he doesn’t need her input. “Very well. As far as your other injuries are concerned, I’ve healed them as best I can, but…” she trails off, suddenly unsure. Jaskier has had <em>so much </em>done to him—he doesn’t deserve to have the lasting reminder scrawled across his back in thick, ropy scars, and she finds herself fiercely regretting that she was unable to rid him of them completely.</p><p>“What?” he prompts her, his neutral mask cracking just slightly and a chip of fear showing on his expression, and Yennefer sighs.</p><p>“There are… there is some scarring,” she says carefully, and is almost surprised when Jaskier relaxes.</p><p>“Is that all?” he asks, and smiles when she nods. It’s the first time she sees him smile.</p><p>It is… enchanting. Not because it is a particularly beautiful smile, although Jaskier does have delicate features she would be charmed by had Geralt not already unknowingly staked his claim. No. It is lovely, because this man has been through so many awful things, has suffered <em>so much </em>at the hands of his captors—and he can still smile, a bright, dazzling smile that is <em>happy </em>and <em>relieved</em> and it is a miracle, really.</p><p>Yennefer thinks that if she knew him better, she could love him, too. She is glad that Geralt found him. He deserves to have somebody who can smile like this in his life.</p><p>“Yes,” she answers truthfully. “You were magically exhausted, because of what you did, but—”</p><p>His face shutters and she cuts herself off. He is suddenly frightened and skittish and desperately, desperately despairing, and she doesn’t know what she has done wrong.</p><p><em>“Oh, gods—” </em>he breathes, “all those people! <em>Fuck</em>, I can’t—Yennefer, I need to—” he’s babbling, and uncurling himself from his chair as though to get up, and she holds her hands up placatingly and shushes him as best she can, worry shooting through her.</p><p>“Jaskier—easy, Jaskier, it’s alright—it’s—what is it? Can you tell me what’s wrong?” she asks desperately when he shows no sign of calming, and he chokes out a derisive laugh.</p><p>“What’s <em>wrong</em>?” he asks, a little hysterical. “I’m—a <em>monster</em>, Yennefer, I can’t—I killed <em>all those people</em>—”</p><p>Oh. <em>Oh</em>. That would do it, she supposes—the guilt, and the fear, and the self-hatred that creeps up oh so slowly, insidiously, reaching for you with feather-light fingers until suddenly you are caught desperately in its grasp. Ordinary placations aren’t going to work here.</p><p>“Did you deserve it?” she cuts him off, her voice business-like and brusque, and it is just enough to shock him out of spiralling.</p><p>“Deserve what?” he asks, though Yennefer can see that he understands what she means.</p><p>“The torture. The—the rape,” she forces herself to say it. “Being kidnapped and forced to do—whatever they made you do, when you were with them before. Did you deserve it?” she is demanding now. This could either work or go terribly, terribly wrong—she’s going with her gut, here, from what Geralt has told her and from what she has seen him survive.</p><p>“Of course not!” he says, bewildered and somewhat affronted, and <em>thank god</em>. “How can you—”</p><p>“So after all of that—after everything they did to you, do you think <em>they </em>deserved it? What you did to them? Because, Jaskier, without knowing you or them very well, I can tell you wholeheartedly that I believe they did. And any court would agree with me,” she tells him, leaving out the fact that she’s probably lying, a bit, about the courts agreeing—but he doesn’t need to know. Instead he looks shell-shocked.</p><p>“They didn’t—not <em>all </em>of them—and not like <em>that</em>,” his voice breaks at the end, his eyes suddenly losing focus as he is plunged back into a memory. Yennefer titters, shaking him out of it.</p><p>“Maybe not all of them, although certainly all of them <em>knew</em>, so they were inviting it on themselves, really. And whatever you did to them, I can assure you, if it was <em>me </em>in your position, I would have done worse,” she tells him, and he looks at her with wide eyes.</p><p>“You don’t know what I did,” he says, and he says it in a way that means <em>please don’t ask, because I’m not going to tell you. I will take this secret to my grave</em>.</p><p>But his eyes… something about his eyes is begging for her to look at him, to really <em>look at him</em>—to look past what his voice is telling her, and what his decidedly neutral expression is telling her—to ignore all of that, and read what is <em>eyes </em>are telling her, because this man is so desperate for absolution he nearly shakes with it.</p><p>“I would have done worse,” she repeats, and it is the right thing to say. Something sparks between them—an understanding, a <em>connection. </em>It opens the gates so that everything might come pouring out in one monumental, emotional rush.</p><p>He begins to cry, shining pearlescent tears that are beautiful and heart-wrenching, and he tells her. He tells her that he’d nearly broken, and she—she finds herself wanting to comfort him. Wanting to offer him some part of herself that isn’t so rough around the edges, isn’t so beaten and broken from the many, many years she’s lived, so that he might take some comfort from it.</p><p>Yennefer crawls up into the armchair and holds Jaskier tightly, like she can stop him breaking apart. It is squashed and uncomfortable and she has a knee in her stomach and his head pressed against her collar bone, and she thinks her foot is digging into his hip and the arms of the chair are not accommodating either of them, and they don’t <em>know </em>each other—but it’s nice. It’s comforting. And she holds him while he shakes.</p><p>He tells her about screaming. Roaring. A primal, instinctual part of him he hadn’t even known <em>existed.</em> He tells her about everything he had been holding down for years and years and years suddenly coming out in a torrent of pure <em>noise</em>, breaking apart everything in its path like nothing he has ever seen. He tells her about Stefan’s face, splitting apart. His eyes rolling out of his head. He tells her about Andrzej and Kazimierz and that whole hateful, hateful family—and how he hadn’t even thought to check that they were all there, all dead, when he’d run—he’d just <em>run</em>.</p><p>How he had slipped through the pools of blood. How it had clung to his bare feet.</p><p>The bodies—endless bodies, except they weren’t really bodies anymore: just chunks of meat. Just chunks of meat. Food for the dogs.</p><p>The horror of it all overwhelms him, and he cries in her arms.</p><p>He tells her of Geralt, how he had been <em>so sure </em>the witcher was going to kill him—he skirts around how he’d felt, when Geralt had thrown aside his silver sword, sure that Jaskier wouldn’t murder him as senselessly as he’d just murdered an entire castle full of people, but he thinks Yennefer might pick up on something in his voice, because her spine straightens a little and her hands curl further into his hair where she is petting him.</p><p>She holds him while he breaks, keeping the broken shards of him together, and he rests his head on her chest when he is done, empty, and lets out a deep, world-weary sigh.</p><p>“I don’t even know you,” he murmurs against her neck. He feels the rumble of her laughter.</p><p>“I feel like I know you,” she tells him, “and not just from what you’ve told me tonight. Geralt told me about you. He… cares for you, very much,” she hesitates, then decides against frightening the siren away before she can gauge more of his feelings toward the witcher. He snuffles against her neck.</p><p>“Where is he, anyway?” Jaskier evades, and Yennefer allows herself a small smile rather than draw attention to it.</p><p>“Collecting Roach,” she tells him. “He wanted to wait until you’d woken up, and he could be sure you were alright. He’ll be a few days or so. Is that alright?” she finds herself asking, surprising even herself—she hadn’t considered that Jaskier wouldn’t be alright. The thought only came to her suddenly.</p><p>He is silent for a moment, his face pressed against her still, and she waits him out.</p><p>“If—if that’s okay,” he mutters out, sounding almost <em>embarrassed</em>, and she smiles against his hair.</p><p>“Stay as long as you like,” Yennefer murmurs, playing with strands of his hair and tugging on them lightly, eliciting small shivers that tremble down his spine. “I find I rather like you, Jaskier,” she tells him, and it sounds stupid to her own ears but he lifts his head and fixes her with a serious gaze that grabs her attention and keeps it.</p><p>“I think I rather like you, too,” he tells her, “as little as I know about you.”</p><p>The silence holds, and stretches just a beat, before he snorts a laugh and she begins giggling and the serious, strained pall that had covered them both is lifted and the room seems suddenly to be flooded with sunshine. And they are laughing in each other’s arms, the sorceress and the siren; she’s known him a week and he’s known her a <em>day</em>—but they feel like they’ve known each other a lifetime, and they’ll know one another a lifetime more, they are sure, because he’s <em>comfortable </em>and she’s kind and friendships like this aren’t too commonplace.</p><p>They disentangle, still biting back somewhat hysterical snorts, and Jaskier finishes his tea while Yennefer hunts through ‘her’ kitchen for food.</p><p>The afternoon passes slowly. They drink good wine and read books, occasionally setting them aside to swap stories about Geralt, descending into mirth at his less gregarious qualities.</p><p>The nighttime falls gently, and Yennefer takes Jaskier out into the town.</p><p>He finds that they are in <em>Novigrad</em>, of all places; he has visited, briefly, a number of times, but never for longer than a night or two and never further than just inside the city walls, where there are a number of taverns which he and Geralt have frequented.</p><p>Yennefer, however, has spent more than enough time in the city to know where to find decent evening’s entertainment, and she drags him along to a small, hole-in-the-wall establishment where the alcohol is expensive enough to be the good kind that isn’t also horribly overpriced and the countertops are wiped down regularly.</p><p>The music is loud and it calls to him, speaking to something inside him that blinks sleepily at the attention, before uncurling and sitting up, and he finds himself singing along, a haunting voice that wails and whistles and is, thankfully, drowned in the chorus of other voices that join in. Yennefer watches him with violet eyes and a broad grin and he tilts his glass at her in acknowledgement; this is good for him. It’s good for him.</p><p>Inevitably, she pulls him up for dancing; he tells her he has never danced before—not like this, and she pulls a face, horrified, before announcing that this is an oversight that must be rectified immediately and he has no choice but to follow her.</p><p>It’s nice, dancing. He’s glad he’s somewhat drunk, because otherwise he suspects he would be thinking too hard about where his arms and feet are supposed to be going, but as it is he finds he is rather enjoying himself, spinning Yennefer around and around.</p><p>The moon is full and bright and he tips his head back and warbles at it, when they eventually grow tired and decide to make their way home. Yennefer slips an arm around his waist and rests her head against his shoulder and he blinks down at her through silver eyes, before trilling at her, too. There are silver-blue scales creeping their way up his arms, up his neck, highlighting his cheekbones, and the other peoples spilling onto the streets around them spare him a glance before apparently deciding that in a city such as Novigrad, this is not the strangest thing they’ve seen.</p><p>He barely remembers the walk back, leaning on the sorceress at his side while she also does her best to lean on him, stumbling through cobbled streets and trying very hard not to make disgraces of themselves, falling flat on their faces. The streets of closed-up market stalls give way to rows of gentrified town-houses, and Yennefer manages to pull him through the small side streets until they reach the one she commandeered for herself, and they collapse together in a heap on her sitting room furniture.</p><p>~~~</p><p>By the third day, when Geralt returns, Jaskier thinks he really might love Yennefer. The world has broken her over and over and she’s moulded herself into something beautiful and <em>powerful </em>and has never apologised for any of it, and he’s awestruck by her.</p><p>Geralt is, too—he sees it in the witcher’s eyes, when he first walks into the room and his eyes are drawn to the sorceress sat in the corner of the room, reading.</p><p>His eyes then flick to Jaskier, and Jaskier feels like a rabbit pinned under the gaze of a wolf, before the witcher softens nearly imperceptibly and Jaskier relaxes into the chair.</p><p>“How’s Roach?” Yennefer asks without looking up.</p><p>“Fat and spoilt,” Geralt answers her after a beat, still looking at Jaskier.</p><p>“I’ll leave you two to it, shall I?” Yennefer says, amused, unfolding her leg from where she was sitting on it and standing gracefully, brushing her skirts down before taking her leave. Jaskier is nearly tempted to call her back.</p><p>“You’re… alright,” Geralt grits out, a minute after Yennefer leaves. It had been the longest minute of Jaskier’s life—yet somehow also the shortest, as he’d taken the opportunity to inspect the witcher for any signs of injury and the witcher had done the same to him, and he thinks he could spend <em>days </em>looking at this man. It is an uncomfortable realisation, in that this is perhaps the worst possible moment in which to take stock of how, precisely, he feels about Geralt, and so he pushes the though aside with vitriol and instead focuses on what the witcher said to him.</p><p>“Yes,” he begins, and suppresses a wince at himself. At them both. They’re not good at this. “Yennefer… she’s looked after me.”</p><p>Geralt quirks an eyebrow. “What do you think of her?” he asks casually, and they both pretend that Geralt isn’t asking Jaskier for his <em>approval</em>.</p><p>“I love her,” he answers honestly, and Geralt relaxes, very minutely. “She’s incredible. I’m glad you have her as a friend.”</p><p>The witcher shakes his head, as though trying to dislodge a thought he is having trouble putting into words, and goes and sits heavily in the chair Yennefer had just vacated. There is a small, self-deprecating twitch to his lips—on anyone else it would be only the very barest hint of a smile; on Geralt it is practically a grin, and Jaskier treasures it.</p><p>“We nearly killed each other, the last time,” the witcher says quietly, and he doesn’t need to elaborate. Jaskier can read it in his eyes, has read it between everything Yennefer has said to him about Geralt over the last few days, and he rolls his neck and cracks his knuckles before offering Geralt a lazy smile.</p><p>“You nearly burnt the world,” he corrects him, and Geralt’s smile widens just a twitch before he schools it into something reprimanding.</p><p>“Don’t go writing a song about it,” he reprimands. Jaskier grins.</p><p>“Already have.”</p><p>Geralt doesn’t look particularly displeased.</p><p>Then he turns serious, and Jaskier utilises some of his fraying self-control and does not squirm under his gaze, pinned as he is by a witcher. The moment holds, and grows taut.</p><p>“Jaskier—”</p><p>“I know,” Jaskier cuts him off, not willing to talk more about this than they already have—but Geralt’s gaze turns reproving, and Jaskier sighs, because he knows they <em>need </em>to talk about it.</p><p>“You… you were afraid I’d kill you,” Geralt begins hesitantly, and the man looks so <em>awkward </em>that Jaskier feels nearly guilty for being the cause of it. Geralt isn’t exactly one to talk about his feelings.</p><p>“I—” his throat closes up. “To be fair, you did draw a silver sword,” he points out, rather lamely, and Geralt’s eyes grow sad and <em>great</em>, now he feels even guiltier.</p><p>“Not for you,” the witcher says beseechingly, his eyes large and sad and strangely <em>hopeful</em>, and Jaskier feels himself swallowed in their depths, caught up and stuck, like a fly in amber. He works his throat. “Never for you—Jaskier, please—”</p><p>“I know,” he saves them both the awkwardness, the acknowledgment of the <em>something more </em>that hangs between them, because it isn’t something he wants to delve into—not yet—when he’s still raw and the shattered pieces of him are being held together by the pure force of will of an, admittedly terrifying, sorceress. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.</p><p>“I know, Geralt,” he continues quietly. “And… I’m sorry if I rattled you. Please believe I didn’t mean to. Just… I was frightened, of <em>myself</em>, and that’s never happened before.”</p><p>Geralt looks like he understands. Geralt is perhaps one of the few who <em>could</em>, Jaskier muses, and he releases a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding when the witcher looks at him with solemn, understanding words.</p><p>“You’re not a monster,” Geralt tells him slowly, and Jaskier has to smile at that. Has to smile at the effort, because Geralt can’t use his words and he’s so out of touch with his emotions it would be funny if it wasn’t desperately sad, and yet—he’s trying.</p><p>“I know,” he answers, just as quietly. “Yennefer has taken great pains to disabuse me of the notion. I can’t promise I’ll always remember—”</p><p>“You don’t have to,” Geralt cuts him off again, “because <em>I will.”</em></p><p>Oh, gods. Oh no. That’s—</p><p>Geralt looks absolutely <em>mortified </em>when Jaskier sniffles, quite against his will, and the witcher goes so far as to lurch out of his chair when the sniffle turns into a very tiny sob before Jaskier waves him down.</p><p>~~~</p><p>“Don’t—that’s not—it’s alright, you’re just—that’s so <em>nice</em>,” he chokes out, and Geralt freezes, half-out of his seat, unwilling to sit back down but unsure of his welcome with the siren.</p><p>Jaskier’s next sob, tiny and broken and <em>heart-wrenching</em>, and Geralt doesn’t think he’s ever had his heart wrenched before he met the siren and he isn’t exactly comfortable with the sensation of it, so he gets up and pads over to Jaskier, who has curled up in his seat and is pressing a hand across his eyes, as though hiding from the fact will make all of this go away.</p><p>Awkwardly, Geralt gets to his knees before the siren, and slowly, oh-so-slowly, he fits one hand against the back of his neck and squeezes, very lightly. He hasn’t really ever given physical comfort before—Yennefer, whenever she was upset, turned into a hissing, spitting wild thing, and refused any form of comfort regardless of whom had upset her, and he had largely been banished until she had gotten herself under control unless he himself had been the cause of the upset. Before her, there had been nobody.</p><p>But the siren is… tactile, for lack of a better word—Geralt had noticed, in the months they had travelled together. Even after the years he had apparently spent at the hands of those <em>bastards </em>he’d so rightfully murdered, he still craved human touch.</p><p>And Geralt does his best, so he wraps a hand around the nape of Jaskier’s neck and is prepared (as much as he can be, for whenever somebody touches him willingly, which… rarely happens) for when the siren surges forward and almost falls out of the chair, seeking Geralt’s larger frame and curling himself into it, as much as he can. As much as he has been invited to.</p><p>Geralt lets him.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier’s mind is spinning and so he cannot be held accountable for what he does next.</p><p>Thankfully, Geralt does not seem particularly interested in holding him to account.</p><p>Instead, he accepts the graceless mess of knees and elbows and Jaskier’s head hitting his collarbone with a rather solid <em>thud</em>, wrapping his arms almost tenderly around the siren’s shaking frame as he offers what comfort he can, as little as he is accustomed to it.</p><p>Jaskier takes it greedily, tears slipping free quite against his will as he falls off the chair entirely and lands heavily in Geralt’s lap. Geralt, to his credit, takes this in stride, pulling Jaskier up so he is settled more comfortably across Geralt’s thighs, running a soothing hand down his side as the siren quietly cries.</p><p>It is the second time in less than a week he has shaken apart in somebody’s lap like this, and he would be mortified if it didn’t also seem to be exactly what he needed, and—well. After everything he’s been through, he thinks he can indulge in a little bit of selfishness, he thinks almost mulishly to himself.</p><p>“You’re alright,” Geralt murmurs against his hair, and Jaskier realises between sniffles as the tears dry themselves up that the witcher has been murmuring meaningless platitudes into his hair for the past few minutes, his hands swiping large, calming tracks down his sides, and it only serves to set him off again.</p><p>Torture is fucking awful, because apparently, the aftermath is just as humiliating as the actual ordeal is horrifying.</p><p>Geralt holds him through this outburst, too, whispering and—<em>petting </em>him, and holding him together, just as Yennefer did.</p><p>They both think of themselves as inhuman and vicious and terrifying, but Jaskier thinks almost <em>gleefully </em>that they’re actually quite good at this whole comforting business.</p><p>His tears dry up, and he feels—just absolutely exhausted, and so he allows himself to be held by Geralt just a few minutes more, and the witcher actually indulges him.</p><p>That unspoken thing between them pulses, a thread between them that pulls and grows taut, demands their attention, but they both ignore it in favour of just revelling in the closeness of the other, in accepting the companionship without trying for something <em>more</em>, and it’s novel and exciting while being familiar and <em>warm</em>, and this unspoken thing is almost acknowledged in the way Jaskier rests his head against Geralt’s shoulder and after a brief pause the witcher rests his chin, in turn, against Jaskier’s head, but simply because they both know that it is there does not mean this needs to be awkward or embarrassing.</p><p>It simply is.</p><p>They let the moment lie a few minutes more, before Jaskier sighs and begins to untangle himself, offering Geralt a small smile.</p><p>“Yennefer was going to take me to the zoo, today,” he tells Geralt, and the witcher quirks an eyebrow. “I’ve never been,” he continues, searching the witcher’s eyes—</p><p>“Me neither,” Geralt tells him, his face reschooled into his witcher neutrality, but his words bely his impassiveness. “Shall we go find her?”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier is a <em>marvel</em>, Geralt thinks to himself, not for the first time, as he watches the siren prance between the enclosures, cooing at the animals laying lazily within and paying little heed to whether the witcher and the sorceress are following him.</p><p>Yennefer and Geralt, for their part, pace slowly down the paths, paying more attention to one another and to Jaskier than to the creatures in their cages. Geralt winces at the term, thinking of Jaskier, bound and bleeding—the animals here are treated far better than anybody else he has ever met in a cage, he thinks to himself; the three tigers he had actually gone to the fenceline to look at had watched him with the indolent eyes of well-fed predators; they’d had a spark of <em>life </em>to them; an awareness and a contentment he hadn’t expected to fine here.</p><p>Places such as this usually treat their creatures as little more than commodities, which was why he had been a little worried when he’d first heard the word <em>zoo</em>, but Yennefer had assured him that Jaskier would find nothing here to upset him and if Geralt cannot trust her then he cannot trust anyone, so he’d indulged the both of them and gone along, and been pleasantly surprised.</p><p>He is surprised again when Yennefer links her arm in his, and he fights the urge to look across at her. This rebuilding of trust between them, the forging of this friendship—this cannot be hurried, and it has to be at <em>her </em>pace; he’d hurt her most grievously, and anything she deigns to give him needs to be on her terms.</p><p>It is a few minutes before she speaks, and he feels oddly as though he has passed some sort of test.</p><p>“You’re in love with him,” she tells him. Simply.</p><p>They walk in silence.</p><p>She breaks it. “Don’t deny it.”</p><p>“I wasn’t going to,” he murmurs. “I was thinking. I’ve never—”</p><p>“Thought about it? Not even once?” her tone is faintly accusatory.</p><p>He eyes her; she is looking ahead, watching Jaskier make nearly a fool of himself as he presses his face against the wire walls of the enclosure, the hawk within watching him with one of the least impressed expressions Geralt has ever seen on a bird.</p><p>“He’s important to me,” he says, and it feels like more of a confession than it actually is.</p><p>In his head, his thoughts are swirling as he fights to catch up with where this conversation has led. He’s been… slowly acclimatising himself to the fact that he now cares about somebody beside himself, beside Roach, beside Yennefer—and the sorceress has gone and overturned all of his neatly stacked realisations with a great quandary like that that he is ill-prepared to deal with and she knows it.</p><p>It’s horribly frustrating, and he suppresses the urge to growl at her for it, knowing that it wouldn’t get him anywhere with her.</p><p>This. This is one of the reasons why the two of them never worked out—because she couldn’t accommodate his own shortcomings, even as he couldn’t accommodate hers. They weren’t compatible in that regard. She wasn’t patient enough to deal with him when he was struggling and in turn he didn’t give her what she needed when that was compassion and understanding. They blazed through the hard parts of a relationship with phenomenal sex and the fact that anybody who saw them together could never decide if they were in love with the both of them or in absolute, pants-shitting fear of them both, and they fell short on the other parts.</p><p>Yennefer wanted <em>everything</em>, and when Geralt couldn’t give it to her she punished him for it—and so when she needed him, he punished her right back.</p><p>He takes a breath. There isn’t any point in dragging all of that out now—not when this is new and raw and Jaskier needs them both.</p><p>“He’s more than important—”</p><p>“Yennefer,” he warns, his voice a low rasping growl, and she—amazingly—subsides.</p><p>They couldn’t be there for each other, but they can be there for Jaskier.</p><p>“Just… don’t fuck it up,” she tells him, her voice low and more revealing of her emotions than he thinks he’s ever heard it—and here is where her vulnerability would have struck him the wrong way, before, and he’d have taken the opportunity to cut her deep and cruelly and leave her bleeding on the floor while he took his leave.</p><p>He doesn’t.</p><p>He just nods, instead, and the wild, vicious thing between them that had pricked its ears when she’d first pushed him now lays its head down again, put to rest by the cordiality they have managed to strike.</p><p>It’s nice, this friendship thing.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt and Jaskier dance around one another, in Yennefer’s home.</p><p>It’d be almost amusing, if it weren’t so frustrating for the both of them.</p><p>Yennefer’s stolen home has four bedrooms and two bathrooms—the <em>height </em>of luxury. Yennefer has taken the top floor for herself, which is the master bedroom and bathroom together, so she can take long soaks in the bath without interruption, she claims.</p><p>Jaskier thinks it is just to try to instrument a scenario where Jaskier or Geralt walks in on the other, while using the bath.</p><p>As has just happened.</p><p>Jaskier is sitting forward in the bath, thankfully, his back to the door, knees drawn up while he scrubs himself.</p><p>Geralt bursts through the door with little fanfare and succeeds in scaring the living fucking daylights out of Jaskier.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” the siren exhales, splashing a liberal amount of water onto the wooden floor and turning around to glare at the witcher.</p><p>Geralt looks stricken. It is… considerably more panic than Jaskier thinks simply walking in on him deserves, considering they have bathed together before and nudity has never bothered either of them.</p><p>But Geralt is… Geralt is looking at his <em>back</em>—oh.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>“Your—” Geralt begins hoarsely, and his throat closes up and he leans against the doorframe, still staring.</p><p>There is a quiet unspoken thing between the two of them, but it has no room here, because Geralt is panicking and the guilt is eating at him fiercely—Jaskier can see it from here, and he needs to di something about it before Geralt does something stupid.</p><p>“Come here,” he murmurs, but Geralt is frozen.</p><p>Jaskier sighs. “<em>Geralt</em>,” he says, more sharply, and the witcher looks helplessly back at him; “come here,” he says again, and this time Geralt obeys, walking over to him on wooden legs.</p><p>He drops to his knees beside the tub, his eyes still drawn to Jaskier’s back, and the siren lets him look.</p><p>Geralt’s throat works.</p><p>“Jaskier,” he begins, “I am—<em>so sorry—”</em></p><p>“It isn’t your fault,” Jaskier says, a bit more sharply than he’d intended, but Geralt doesn’t flinch; only stares at him with eyes the size of dinner plates and doesn’t say anything. “Seriously, Geralt. You couldn’t have—that family had me long before you met me, and it’s not your fault, what they did to me.”</p><p>“It’s my fault that they caught you again,” Geralt rasps, and—fuck, has he really been thinking that? Jaskier frowns.</p><p>“No,” he says. “You—if Stefan had wanted me, he’d have found a way to get me, and all the witchers in the world wouldn’t have been able to stop him. He’d have hunted me to the ends of the fucking Continent, and through all the seas, if he had to. Those are the kinds of connections he had. That’s the kind of—of <em>industry</em> this is,” he says, his voice bitter, and Geralt looks—murderous, to put it mildly.</p><p>“<em>Industry</em>,” he spits, and Jaskier sighs and nods.</p><p>“Exotic pets,” Jaskier clarifies. “I once saw a banshee—” and there he stops, because Geralt looks like he’s going to be sick, and because there is not point in bringing any of that up. She’s dead now, anyway. Jaskier doesn’t even remember her name. She’d had no voice, because they’d slashed her throat and taken it from her—but she had managed, through pantomime and drunken, silent giggling and a lot of guessing on Julian’s—Jaskier’s part, to communicate it to him.</p><p>He hasn’t thought of her in years.</p><p>“It’s fucking disgraceful,” Geralt murmurs, and his eyes are back on Jaskier’s scars.</p><p>That silent, unspoken thing cannot be a barrier here, cannot be the cause of Geralt’s distress in this, so Jaskier throws caution to the wind and reaches out, a silent request.</p><p>Frowning, Geralt gives him his hand, and that touch—the spark of connection—</p><p>Jaskier wills his hardness away. There is no place for that here. Geralt and Jaskier were friends first, and they’ll be friends still; anything more will wait, if there will be anything. Jaskier needs to look after his <em>friend</em>.</p><p>He places Geralt’s hand on his back, on his scars, and—</p><p>
  <em>Oh, sweet gods—</em>
</p><p>He hasn’t even touched his own back, in the weeks he has been with Yennefer, and he’s rather more sensitive than he thought he’d be.</p><p>Geralt looks starstruck. His hand, warm and dry and calloused, rests on Jaskier’s back, just over his spine, and Jaskier leans his head back and closes his eyes and lets out a breath.</p><p>“You’re alright,” Geralt murmurs, though it sounds as though he is talking to himself more than to Jaskier. Talking himself through this.</p><p>Good, because Jaskier is lost in the sensations of having another touch him that isn’t hurting him, for once.</p><p>A thumb strokes over a smaller scar, gentle and slow and affectionate, and Jaskier feels his toes curling at the feeling and holds back a moan. <em>Fuck</em>, he’d forgotten what other people touching him felt like.</p><p>Geralt takes his time exploring. Jaskier cannot deny him anything.</p><p>His cock stays soft, and when Geralt rises onto his knees to lean forward Jaskier sneaks a look and find that Geralt, too, isn’t gaining anything sexually from this—</p><p>Which is good, because Jaskier thinks that if he had been he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from clawing Geralt’s eyes out and running; after what had been done to him, it’ll be a long while before he feels comfortable in his skin like that again.</p><p>But Geralt lightly petting his back, smoothing his hands, his killing hands, over the damage that others had done to him—so lightly and so carefully and so gently—this is good.</p><p>This is something he had done for Geralt, because the witcher is tactile, whether he allows himself the luxury of it or not, and because he wouldn’t have calmed in the slightest, even if Jaskier had given him every reassurance in the world. No, Geralt needed to touch him, and Jaskier had wanted him to—</p><p>But Jaskier hadn’t accounted for the fact that maybe he needed Geralt to touch him, to.</p><p>It is almost unbearably comfortable, and Jaskier feels himself sinking into the <em>trust </em>that is wrapped between the two of them, his mind going strangely blank as the sensations on his back send him—away.</p><p>Distantly, he is aware of Geralt soaping him up. Jaskier had already washed his hair, but Geralt does it again anyway, rubbing battle-hardened hands and massaging away tension in his scalp that had been there gods-only-know how fucking long, and Jaskier goes warm and pliant under the witcher’s ministrations.</p><p>Jaskier has bathed Geralt before, a number of times—and this is the first time the witcher is returning the favour, and Jaskier is going to have to get him to do this again, because it’s lovely. He’d never realised. If this is how Geralt felt, every time, then the witcher has been holding out on him.</p><p>Jaskier might almost be very slightly annoyed by it, had it been possible for him to be annoyed about anything at all right now.</p><p>Geralt carefully, carefully rinses the soap from him, then Jaskier is being nudged upwards out of the water and a towel wrapped around him, and Geralt takes his time carefully drying him, mindful of the scars that litter Jaskier’s arms, his legs.</p><p>Then he is being dressed in the plain breeches and shirt that he’d brought with him—and he thinks he must have picked up Geralt’s shirt by accident, because it swamps him—and being led out of the washroom and towards a bedroom.</p><p>He comes to, out of his stupor, in a bed that is not his own. Geralt is sitting against the headboard, with Jaskier laid in front of him, head in Geralt’s lap, and the witcher has one hand in Jaskier’s hair and the other is holding a book.</p><p>This position is not so unfamiliar. Jaskier has climbed all over the witcher, while out on the road, stealing warmth and food and comfort, and—</p><p>Jaskier closes his eyes, listening to Geralt’s quiet hum as he cards his fingers through the siren’s hair. They don’t need words. They haven’t for days, now.</p><p>He falls asleep.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier has been with Yennefer three weeks, and already he would die for her.</p><p>Geralt has been with her two weeks and a half and already he regrets putting the two of them together.</p><p>Yennefer has known Jaskier for all of three weeks, and has known Geralt for decades, and she loves both of them and is about ready to throttle them. Or bang their heads together and hope that they’ll finally use the language they both have been speaking all of their lives to string a sentence together and confess the feelings that are plain as day to anybody forced to be in a room that has the two of them in it for more than five minutes.</p><p>Anyway.</p><p>It has been three week, and Geralt is wielding his sword with a furious expression and Jaskier is brandishing his lute as though he’s able to do anything with it, because Yennefer has just invited three strangers into their home, one of which took one look at Jaskier and made a noise so utterly inhuman it forced Jaskier right out of his skin and into his <em>other </em>one, scarred and unsuited to their environment as it is, and now the six of them in Yennefer’s front room are in very real danger of tripping into a fight, because Yennefer apparently cannot disclose her schemes to anybody else at all.</p><p>“<em>Explain</em>,” Geralt hisses at her through clenched teeth.</p><p>“Yes, Yennefer, I really think you ought to,” the eldest of the three strangers murmurs—the one who had startled Jaskier; he is looking at the siren now with something akin to awe writ across his face, and Jaskier hisses at him with knife-like teeth that hadn’t quite folded away when he’d slipped back into his human form after he’d spent a bare minute struggling in rather an ungainly manner on the floor. In fairness, he hadn’t had legs at the time, so he thinks he can be excused for this.</p><p>The three strangers all unsheathed long, dagger-like blades when Geralt had drawn his sword, and the two younger men that flank the first do not look nearly so calm nor awe-struck at the developments. They look rather more put out and murderous, truth be told.</p><p>Yennefer snorts, unconcerned with the show of aggression before her.</p><p>“Jaskier, this is your grandfather,” she introduces. “Indrem, this is Jaskier.”</p><p>Geralt relaxes. <em>Family</em>. He sheathes his sword.</p><p>At this, the three strangers—sirens, it would seem—also sheathe their daggers. They relax.</p><p>They really shouldn’t have, because Jaskier releases a strangled scream, with just a hint of <em>other </em>putting a bit more force into it than Geralt is strictly comfortable with, and he jumps forward before anybody can think to stop him and he smashes his lute over his grandfather’s head.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It takes an <em>hour </em>of soothing ruffled feathers to get everybody to sit down in the same room again.</p><p>The three strangers, surprisingly, had taken the attack well in stride—Indrem had fallen quite abruptly to the floor, but it had been Geralt who had leapt forward to drag Jaskier away from gutting his father with a broken-off piece of lute, while the other two strangers had hung back and snickered at their apparent-leader being taken out with an <em>instrument</em>, of all things.</p><p>Yennefer had looked worried for all of three seconds—this hadn’t quite gone according to what she had imagined—before she shakes off the surprise and adapts to the new situation, ushering the sirens into her kitchen and offering drinks, like a good host whose other guest hadn’t just tried to murder one of them.</p><p>Geralt takes the opportunity to calm Jaskier into something more manageable.</p><p>After a lot of growling and bristling and snapping of too-sharp teeth and yowling in a language that sounds a lot like waves, crashing against a beach, Geralt finally manages to wrangle some explanation out of his siren.</p><p>“He <em>left her</em>, Geralt—he left <em>them</em>. His wife. And my mother. He broke her heart. My grandmother killed herself, like my—” he cuts himself off, but Geralt knows what he meant to say. “And now she’s <em>dead</em>, and—it’s my fault, yes, but it’s also <em>his</em>, and—oh, gods. This isn’t—for <em>fuck’s sake</em>, why is Yennefer—”</p><p>“She’s always been like this,” Geralt finishes for him, and the two of them spare a moment to gripe about the sorceress who really shouldn’t meddle in other people’s affairs, before Jaskier sighs and thumps his head against Geralt’s shoulder.</p><p>“I suppose I should hear him out, shouldn’t I,” he mutters darkly, and Geralt doesn’t grin, but it’s a near thing.</p><p>“You did just hit him with a lute,” he says, very reasonably, and Jaskier groans again.</p><p>“Fuck’s sake. Fine. But I can’t promise I’ll be reasonable. I haven’t seen another siren in <em>years</em>—years, Geralt! And I won’t be held accountable for going a bit crazy. Especially since the first one I meet is my <em>grandfather</em>. Who is only half-siren, to be fair, depending on who you listen to—I’d heard he was human, but he decidedly <em>isn’t human </em>after that show there so he must have a bit of siren in him, and—oh, fuck it. Bring him in. Let’s get this over with.”</p><p>It isn’t the most enthusiastic agreement Geralt could have hoped for, but at least Jaskier is speaking proper words again, he muses, as he pokes his head in the kitchen door and jerks his head at Yennefer. Then he glares, to show how utterly <em>displeased </em>he is with all of this, but she just smiles brightly at him and ushers her guests back out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, where Jaskier looks about as approachable as a particularly displeased basilisk.</p><p>“Dandelion—”</p><p>“<em>No,</em>” Jaskier cuts Indrem off, and this is going well. “I don’t know where you learnt that, but that <em>isn’t my name</em>. You can call me Jaskier, or you can go,” he hisses, and Indrem bows his head with rather more grace than Jaskier’s outburst had warranted, and corrects himself smoothly.</p><p>“Jaskier,” he begins again, and Geralt’s siren settles somewhat, though he still watches Indrem through slitted eyes. “I am your grandfather, on your mother’s side. These—” he indicates his entourage, who have been watching the show with the kind of avid attention dedicated to a particularly vicious tavern brawl, and Geralt isn’t sure what to make of them. “These are your… uncles, in this language, I think. Ilfeck and Mryam,” he turns to the two men, who nod politely when gestured to, and Geralt wants to thump him when Jaskier only stares mutinously at them before sighing and adhering to his manners.</p><p>“Pleased to meet you,” he tells them, and it sounds sincere enough, though Geralt can tell that the siren is lying through his teeth. It’s a start. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Jaskier continues, and Geralt wants to pinch the skin between his brows to try to allay the headache he can feel is coming; trust Jaskier to make this as uncomfortable as possible for everybody involved.</p><p>“No,” Indrem agrees. “We’re here—that is, <em>I’m </em>here, to ask if—well…” the older siren suddenly looks unsure, and Geralt frowns, wondering what the hell this is all about, before Indrem apparently collects himself and forges on. “When I left your grandmother, decades ago, it was because I knew that she was going to ask me to stay. With her, in the ocean,” he clarifies, when Jaskier frowns, just a bit—and now Geralt’s siren frowns more, apparently unsatisfied.</p><p>“Didn’t you want to?” Jaskier asks, and Indrem smiles with no small amount of regret.</p><p>“Didn’t you?” he says gently, and Jaskier looks—like something has just dawned on him. Ilfeck and Mryam had the right of it, he muses to himself; putting aside that Jaskier is his friend and might be very mentally scarred by this encounter for several years yet; it is like watching a natural disaster teeter slowly over the point of no return.</p><p>“I didn’t—I had nothing holding me there,” he says, his tone faintly accusatory, and Indrem nods just slightly.</p><p>“You didn’t. And I did. This is true. But why did you go that first time?” he asks, and Jaskier frowns.</p><p>“Curiosity.”</p><p>“And once you’d sated it—had it been enough? Didn’t you want to know <em>more? </em>If you’d returned home, and your mother had asked you never to return to land again—would you have done it?”</p><p>Jaskier just stares at him. Indrem sits back in his seat.</p><p>Geralt has never seen Jaskier as anything but <em>Jaskier</em>, but now he looks—like something else.</p><p>Like a predator.</p><p>Geralt finds himself sizing Jaskier up; his first instinct isn’t to fight, exactly, but he pushes aside the <em>whys </em>of it and focuses instead on what he finds.</p><p>Jaskier; tall and broad-shouldered and he isn’t a well-muscled as Geralt but he’s lithe and powerful nonetheless, and he’s quick, too.</p><p>Indrem is older and more experienced and has an edge over Jaskier in terms of weight, in terms of muscle, and his entourage are bigger and broader too—but they are eyeing Geralt as they are calculating how quickly they will need to run, and the confrontation feels as though it is gearing up again to a fight—</p><p>“I’m going to leave,” Geralt blurts, and the other five look at him as though seeing him for the first time.</p><p>It is a novel feeling. He is ordinarily the first thing people notice. Although here it is probably because before, he had been like a particularly vicious hound, sitting quiet in the corner of the room—lethal and well-trained enough not to make a nuisance of themselves. He tamps down on the petulant scowl that wants to twist his face into something fiercer than is probably needed here.</p><p>“What were you going to ask?” Jaskier snaps the tension that had gathered in the room and brings the predators in it to heel, and Indrem smiles very faintly. Yennefer’s brows are raised, though Geralt cannot tell what she is thinking. He feels like he needs a drink, though he doesn’t think it would be a particularly good idea; Yennefer catches his eye as he gazes longingly at the ale she has shelved in here, and shakes her head minutely. Fuck.</p><p>He stands up, and goes; his swords are a weight on his back as he passes the three sirens, and they watch him go with equally neutral expressions that are no doubt hiding a flood of emotions beneath them, and Geralt resists the childish urge to bare his teeth and snarl at them.</p><p>~~~</p><p>“Come with us,” either Ilfeck or Mryam ask—Yennefer hadn’t bothered to figure out which was which—and his compatriots turn to him with scowls turning their features sharp and unyielding, and Yennefer is reminded unerringly of Jaskier in his siren form—all fins and scales and talons.</p><p>“<em>Ilfeck</em>,” the other says—and that answers that, then—and Ilfeck shrugs, apparently unconcerned.</p><p>“Indrem would have sat there, talking circles around what he really wanted to say, all bloody <em>day </em>if we’d let him,” he tells Mryam, arrogance punctuating every word, and Geralt is quietly impressed. <em>He’s got balls, this one</em>.</p><p>Mryam is apparently not so impressed. Indrem sighs, long-suffering.</p><p>“Insult to me notwithstanding—he’s right. I want you to come with us,” Indrem turns back to Jaskier, who looks like he had later on in the night of that <em>fucking </em>party—like he’d rather be anywhere else, and is doing his absolute best to hide it. To give him credit, he’s doing a fairly decent job of it; Yennefer suspects he looks merely bored and perhaps faintly amused, to the others; to Yennefer, who <em>knows</em> him, he looks awful. Yennefer hides a scowl.</p><p>“And why would I do that?” Jaskier asks, and he even sounds vaguely <em>interested</em>. Yennefer is impressed.</p><p>“You’ve been too long away from your own people,” Indrem says. “We’re not particularly ocean-going, though we’re heading to the coast now—we’re nomadic, my sons and I; we go where the land takes us.” He looks as though he would like to say more, but he closes his mouth there and watches Jaskier instead, waiting.</p><p>So far, Jaskier does not look particularly impressed, and neither is Yennefer, to be perfectly honest. This is not what she called Jaskier’s family here for.</p><p>Then Ilfeck says, “how many people have you accidentally killed because you’re not a fucking human, and shouldn’t be living like one?”</p><p>And Yennefer is no longer very sure about the endeavour, she regrets ever letting the three sirens through the door—</p><p>And Jaskier looks like somebody has just pulled the rug out from beneath him; he is pale and wide-eyed and it does not matter that Geralt and Yennefer each have spent days trying to convince Jaskier that he is not a monster, if one of his own kind have just said such a thing.</p><p>Both Indrem and Mryam shoot Ilfeck filthy looks… but do not say anything to the contrary.</p><p>When it becomes apparent that Jaskier <em>has </em>killed people from the long silence that follows Ilfeck’s words, “we can teach you to control it,” Mryam offers quietly. “Teach you about what you <em>are, </em>Jaskier. Perhaps it is time to come home.”</p><p>And Jaskier looks… interested, and Yennefer feels sick.</p><p>She had hoped that meeting his family would have assuaged some of Jaskier’s fears about what he is, and what he is capable of. She hadn’t thought they would try to snatch him away.</p><p>“We’ll take our leave,” Indrem says then quietly, “and be back three days hence. Take the time to think about what you <em>want, </em>Jaskier, and also what is best for you. Know that—” he hesitates, and Yennefer finds herself wanting to kick him out of the door herself; Jaskier is confused enough and does not need to hear whatever is about to come out of Indrem’s lips.</p><p>Thankfully, the other siren, apparently seems to have the same thoughts as she, because he closes his mouth instead, and shakes his head as though shaking loose a fly.</p><p>The three sirens stand, as one, and bow their heads, as one, and leave, as one. It is almost eerie, watching them go. Yennefer had wanted to kick them out of the door herself.</p><p>Jaskier is very quiet. Yennefer steels herself for three days of convincing him that he <em>doesn’t </em>need to take such drastic measures as fleeing the fucking Continent itself with a band of ragged sirens just to learn some control. She could teach him that herself, probably, if he really wanted to hone his skills; chaos is chaos, regardless of what form it takes, and learning self-discipline has been a fundamental part of her training—hell, and Geralt’s too. If Jaskier is truly that frightened of himself then he has no shortage of people willing to help him.</p><p>“He’s gone,” Jaskier says numbly, and she turns to him, helpless. “They’re all gone.”</p><p>“They’re giving you space,” is all she can think to say, is the first explanation that springs to her lips.</p><p>“I don’t want <em>space</em>,” Jaskier says, almost petulantly; he sounds impossibly young, then, and Yennefer wants to take him into her arms again—</p><p>But there is no point coddling him now. Not when he cannot fall apart, because he has a choice to make.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter. You have a choice to make,” she tells him, because it’s true and because lying isn’t going to help. The siren she had held together in her arms just three weeks ago cannot reappear here; he seems to know it, too, as he sets his jaw and looks up at her, hanging onto each word as he forces himself not to shake apart.</p><p>“I don’t know what to do,” he tells her quietly, as though she doesn’t know. “I’m not—even entirely sure of my choices here.”</p><p>Wine. They need wine.</p><p>“Wine,” she says, and goes to fetch it, leaving Jaskier alone in the room entirely.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Yennefer has gone to get wine.</p><p>Jaskier thinks all the wine in the world cannot help here.</p><p>In only a few hours his world has been monumentally and irrevocably turned on its head again.</p><p>He’s getting fucking sick of that happening.</p><p>First his mother, and then—being <em>kidnapped</em>, and all the things that had come with living at court; he’d thought living in that kelpie pool, warding himself against humans and remembering what it was to feel <em>free </em>again would have been the end of it, and then a witcher had come and fallen into his lap and Jaskier being Jaskier, being Julian, being <em>Dandelion</em>, hadn’t been able to resist attempting to make another foray into the human’s world—this time with a witcher at his side, a witcher who owed him a life debt, to protect him from all the human monsters as well as the creature ones.</p><p>And then Jaskier had fallen in love.</p><p>And then he’d been kidnapped <em>again</em>, and murdered a hundred or more people with just his voice, and then after the fiasco of dealing rather horribly with his love for his witcher and running from it all instead, before being tangled up and caught again by the persevering bastard, he found himself dragged to a sorceress and dropped into her lap like he was the kill of a particularly large and monumentally more lethal housecat, and found himself befriending her to the point where, if her life were threatened, he’d have no compunction in murdering another five-score people for her, too.</p><p>Really, the last year or so of his life has been particularly chaotic.</p><p>Jaskier finds himself wishing he had stayed in that fucking pool.</p><p>But he hadn’t, and now he’s here, and the thing is… the thing is—</p><p>Indrem and Ilfeck and Mryam are <em>right</em>.</p><p>Jaskier isn’t human.</p><p>And no matter what Geralt and Yennefer have to say about it, that isn’t going to change. But what they also haven’t considered, and what Jaskier has spent a very long time ignoring about himself, is that he had left his pod, and was captured, before he had learnt all the essential things about being one of his kind that can <em>only be taught </em>by one of his own kind, and he really… really probably ought to go with his grandfather, and learn them.</p><p>He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life knowing that he had had the chance to figure out that part of himself, and had not taken the opportunity.</p><p>That vicious, primal part of himself, where he had ripped that scream from and Sang those people to death with a force unlike he has ever heard of coming from a siren—that is something he wants to know about. That is something that Indrem likely could help him with.</p><p>But he doesn’t want to leave Geralt.</p><p><em>He loves Geralt</em>.</p><p>He’d thought it to himself before, but had never truly put words to the feeling that had taken shape in his gut and twisted each time he laid eyes on the witcher.</p><p>There had been something fragile and careful and unspoken between the two of them; he and Geralt both had felt it, and he wants to nurture it and see what might become of it, because he thinks it could be <em>beautiful</em>.</p><p>Yennefer returns with wine.</p><p>Jaskier figures out how to neatly order all of his thoughts and put them into sentences and words that can be understood, and Yennefer listens carefully while he talks, sipping her wine all the while.</p><p>When he is done, she uncorks another bottle and they share that one, too.</p><p>“You love him,” she says finally, and Jaskier nods. They both knew it, but this is the first time he has said it to her.</p><p>“Does it complicate things?” she asks, and he’s grateful that she’s here—he’s grateful that she’s asking him these things, because they’re not things he would be asking himself otherwise.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>She hums.</p><p>“I can teach you control. Geralt can teach you control. Chaos is chaos; whatever form it takes, it can be brought to heel by the one wielding it, else everybody capable of chaos would have been torn apart by it centuries ago. Maybe we can’t teach you how to be a siren, but we can teach you how to be <em>you</em>, Jaskier, and not be afraid of himself.”</p><p>That… that both helps, and doesn’t, because it makes it <em>so much easier </em>to stay with Geralt and love him properly, without the fear of Geralt eventually having to kill Jaskier for accidentally murdering a village full of innocents, or something.</p><p>It also makes Indrem’s offer more… tempting, somehow, because Jaskier won’t be choosing it to save his own skin or the lives of others—he’ll be choosing it to <em>learn</em>, and there is a small part of his heart—the human part, he has no doubt—that craves new knowledge like he craves the water, craves air to breathe and freedom to roam.</p><p>If he goes with Indrem, then he won’t just be supressing and controlling that primal part of himself he has accidentally unlocked, because he’ll be doing that regardless of whom he picks.</p><p>He’ll be learning about his <em>history</em>—about his grandmother, and what she was like; about all that Indrem has learnt of his pod, his father, perhaps, wherever he is, while Jaskier has not been at see.</p><p>He’ll be going to the <em>sea</em>.</p><p>He is reminded, very suddenly, of a dream he has not had in months. Of an enormous ocean-going monster, with steel grey eyes that haunt him still.</p><p>Is that monster a part of his heritage?</p><p>Is that monster a way for his brain to conceptualise the vicious, hidden part of himself, that shouts people apart into ribbons of flesh and skin, and is it something that all sirens struggle with? Is this something he would have learnt, had he stayed with his pod?</p><p>He drinks more wine.</p><p>“There’s a monster in me,” he says to Yennefer—slurs, really, because this is strong wine and he doesn’t need to worry about keeping his composure in front of her.</p><p>“There’s a monster in all of us,” she smiles, staring off into space, and he wonders what she is remembering.</p><p>“I shouldn’t have been able to just… kill those people with my voice,” he frowns, and she looks at him.</p><p>“How do you know?” she asks, reasonably. “Perhaps that is just something that sirens can do.”</p><p><em>Fuck</em>. “You’re not helping,” he tells her, “you’re confusing me more.”</p><p>“You’d already thought of that, or you wouldn’t have said it to me.”</p><p>She’s right, but she doesn’t need to be so smug about it.</p><p>He must have said it out loud, because she snorts and finishes her glass, then frowns at the empty wine bottle beside her.</p><p>How have they gotten through it so fast? Though to be fair, it has been a trying day for him, and she <em>had </em>just had four sirens and a murderous witcher in her sitting room, trying to stop them all from killing each other.</p><p>He snorts at the thought.</p><p>“Y’know,” Yennefer begins, her tone conspiratorial and also drunk, “Geralt, he—he’d wait for you,” she says.</p><p>Jaskier doesn’t understand. “What?”</p><p>She frowns, and flips her hand at him as though he <em>should </em>have understood what she was saying. “If you went with Indrem—he’d wait. That’s the kind of person he is. A few years, a decade, <em>two </em>decades—he’d wait.”</p><p>Fuck. <em>Fuck.</em></p><p>The thought of Geralt waiting for him…</p><p>“Why?” Jaskier hears himself asking. “I’m—I’m not <em>special</em>. He can just—go pick up another siren, or something.”</p><p>Yennefer giggles. “Geralt has loved exactly two people in his life, and they’re both sitting in this room. He’s like… a hundred years old, Jaskier; he’s not just going to forget you and move on. He’d wait.”</p><p>So Jaskier could have both, potentially; he could go with his grandfather, and see the world, and see <em>himself</em>, finally, the truth of himself, through the lens of other sirens who understand him implicitly, and then he could return home and love Geralt for the rest of his life, and pick up the bard’s profession and sing tales of their adventures for however many years Destiny decide to grace the both of them with.</p><p>It’s a lovely thought. It feels like poison in his gut. Jaskier doesn’t know what he wants anymore.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After a day, Jaskier has decided to politely decline his grandfather’s request, and try to make things work with Geralt.</p><p>Yennefer is supportive of his decision.</p><p>“I just—I don’t <em>know </em>them,” he tells her, hand clasped in hers as they return from the veritable metropolis of stores that make up Novigrad’s centre, bags clasped in his other hand and looped carefully in the crook of his arm.</p><p>She makes an agreeing noise.</p><p>“And after—well. After everything, I don’t really…” he trails off, but she knows what he means anyway, and squeezes his hand.</p><p>They walk in silence a little longer; Yennefer is good at drawing him into talking, he muses to himself.</p><p>“And Geralt…” he does not know what he means to say about the witcher—or even if there is anything <em>to </em>say. Yennefer makes a noise, low in her throat—something between a scoff and a pained noise of agreement, and this time Jaskier squeezes <em>her </em>hand and she turns to look at him, smiling.</p><p>“You should wear the yellow tunic, when we go out tonight. Then I can wear that blue—”</p><p>“Or the <em>green</em>,” Jaskier talks with her, not quite cutting her off as her sentence drops away for him to fill in the rest; it is a quirk of talking with her he hadn’t even realised he had developed until earlier that day, when they had gone to buy food from one of the vendors and had completed one another’s sentences with barely a half-glance between them to confirm what the other wanted—they just <em>knew</em>. The vendor had smiled and fluttered over two young lovers, and slipped them an extra sweet roll each; they hadn’t corrected her, in favour of appreciating the free food.</p><p>“Will you not regret not finding more out about yourself?” Yennefer asks him, when silence has lapsed between them once more and the path begins to fall away downhill, the cobbles here becoming more uniform, less used, as they leave the market district and make their way towards the rows and rows of townhouses.</p><p>He considers. “I don’t think so,” he hedges, and he can feel the disapproval rolling off her in waves so he amends his answer somewhat. “I mean—” he breaks off, searching for the words, trying to put into sentences what he is feeling in his gut. “I just think I would regret… I would regret not having this time with Geralt, more than I would regret not going with my grandfather.”</p><p>She makes a humming noise of affirmation; it is a habit she has picked up from Geralt, he thinks. She has had her time with him—has had <em>decades </em>with the witcher, and Jaskier loves them both, but he cannot help but feel that he has to catch up, somehow.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The next day, he has decided to go with his grandfather.</p><p>Yennefer is in her kitchen, steadily brewing something that apparently will smell delightful, and different to everybody who smells it according to their individual preferences; all Jaskier can smell is the faint smell of smoke, and… blood? He tries not to read too much into that. Perching on a dining chair as he is, sitting with his feet on the chair and his knees drawn up to his chest, resting his chin atop his arms that are laid across his knees, he’s in rather a precarious position should something go wrong with her brewing—but he’s tired and wants advice and he trusts her not to set the both of them on fire.</p><p>He confesses to Yennefer—his feeling that he ought to <em>catch up</em>, that he doesn’t know how long he is going to have with Geralt and that there is so much time still that he wants to spend with him.</p><p>“You don’t <em>know </em>how long you’ll have with him?” she asks, confused, her brow furrowing from the quirk it had jumped to.</p><p>“I’m not—entirely sure how long sirens live,” he confesses, and her mouth struggles with a grin she apparently feels she ought to hide. It settles on a wry smirk that was probably supposed to be a neutral line of pressed lips—but Yennefer was never particularly subtle, nor good at concealing her emotions. He shoots her a rueful grin, which she takes as permission to snort out a burst of laughter that has him chuckling lightly at himself.</p><p>“Fucking <em>hell</em>, Jaskier,” she bites out, shaking her head. “You’re just—you’re so—”</p><p>“I know,” he says, saving her the struggle of trying to find words to describe him.</p><p>“Isn’t that just another reason to <em>stay </em>with him?” she asks, and—yes, that’s probably the more logical conclusion from what he has just told her, but…</p><p>“I’ve not been alive <em>that </em>long,” he says, because even though he’s not certain exactly <em>how </em>long he’s been around he knows that he can’t be older than half a century. Probably. Besides—Indrem, his <em>grandfather</em>, doesn’t look much older than Jaskier himself, so he supposes he’s got at the very least another half-century in him—more than enough time to spend some years with his kin, and then go and find his witcher.</p><p>Yennefer is silent as she muses over his explanations. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, so he is forced to wait in bated silence for her opinion.</p><p>“It’s very logical,” she says finally, which—okay. He thinks he can work with that.</p><p>“Yes,” he agrees; it’s a fair point. “And it’s the best of both worlds.”</p><p>She hums.</p><p>He waits for her to speak; he can tell she has something more to say, chewing over it like a horse with a bit, deciding whether or not to say it aloud. She will, he knows, if he gives her enough time—she always does. For such an incredibly powerful sorceress who takes absolutely no shit from anyone, she’s actually pretty easy to manipulate.</p><p>“Do you <em>want </em>to wait, though?” she asks finally, and he can extrapolate what she means simply by the way her mouth twists and her eyes tighten, and this—this is his problem.</p><p>He digs his heels in. “It won’t be so long. And I’ll have the rest of forever with him.”</p><p>She just hums again. “And—what about your <em>catching up</em>?” she asks, her distaste evident in the emphasis she gives the very words he said to her earlier, and he flushes a bit with embarrassment at himself.</p><p>“I don’t—it’s petty and unnecessary and I don’t want to be like that,” he says, all in a rush, and Yennefer looks over at him approvingly and he feels himself flush again under the praise.</p><p>“So logic, then,” she sums up, and he nods. Logic. He can be logical.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He cannot be logical.</p><p>“I’m staying,” he says decisively, and Yennefer just looks at him from where she is sprawled over her chair, legs kicked up on one arm and her shoulders and neck slumped against the other. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but she’s managed to finish two bottles of wine since she settled there more than an hour ago, so he supposes the convenience and casual arrogance of the pose outweighs any discomfort she may be feeling. Besides, she’s a witch—it wouldn’t be the strangest thing he’s known her to do if she has somehow magically made the chair much more comfortable where she is slouched across it.</p><p>“Okay,” she says unhelpfully.</p><p>“I’m serious.”</p><p>“I’m sure.”</p><p>“Yennefer,” he wines, and she smirks a little, bringing the bottle to her lips and tipping the last of it into her mouth, taking a long time to swallow and then answer him. He scowls at her.</p><p>“Jaskier,” she says back, and, <em>oh—</em>her voice is serious now. He settles eagerly. “See what they have to say,” she tells him, and he scowls at her again.</p><p>“You’re not helpful. They expected an answer by <em>today</em>,” he reminds her, and she shrugs.</p><p>“They won’t have a choice, because you’ve not made up your mind. If they annoy you just him them with your lute again, it was very funny.”</p><p>“I <em>broke </em>my lute.”</p><p>“And I fixed it! I’ll fix it again! Especially if they deserve it. That Mryam was an asshole,” she says with relish, and he eyes her warily.</p><p>“Are you—”</p><p>“Probably not,” she reassures him, though he squints at her anyway, wondering if she really would go through with fucking the other siren—his <em>uncle</em>. He wouldn’t put it past her. The returning squint does not help in any way.</p><p>“Do you know when Geralt will be back?” he changes the subject, hoping that thinking of the witcher will cause Yennefer to forget his uncle and focus instead on where the hell Geralt has apparently gotten himself to. It’s not unlike the witcher to go off for days at a time, taking a job or getting horribly drunk or patronising a brothel—but now would be something of an inopportune time for him to return.</p><p>Yennefer shakes her head, and then pauses, apparently having come to a realisation. Comprehension dawns on her face. “Geralt doesn’t know, does he? That you… have a choice to make.”</p><p>He smiles. “No, he doesn’t. And we’re going to keep it that way. I don’t—” he breaks off, because he’s not exactly sure <em>why</em>, only that he doesn’t want the witcher to know about Jaskier’s predicament; it would only make things awkward, he feels, and he isn’t prepared to navigate what consequences of telling Geralt would invite.</p><p>Yennefer only nods. She understands; he’s grateful that he doesn’t have to put into words what he doesn’t know himself.</p><p> Then there is a knock at the door, and suddenly Jaskier has absolutely no idea what he is going to do.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Mryam is smirking as he walks first into the house; Jaskier’s fingers itch for his lute. Ilfeck looks long-suffering where he brings up the rear, closing the door behind them as they file in.</p><p>Jaskier’s eyes are drawn to Indrem, who is watching him in turn; the other siren’s face is a smooth mask, devoid of emotion and any sign of what he might be thinking. Jaskier hopes that his own face is schooled into such precise neutrality.</p><p>Yennefer stands beside Jaskier, eyeing the intruders into her home with surprising continence, for a drunk witch. He wishes suddenly that they hadn’t finished off that last bottle together.</p><p>“Jaskier,” Indrem finally breaks the silence, and he winces at the noise. He’s not ready for this.</p><p>“Indrem,” he acknowledges, unsure as to how to proceed.</p><p>“Have you decided?” Ilfeck, mercifully, decides to cut short the formalities and simply get to the point. Jaskier feels himself warming to his uncle somewhat.</p><p>“…No,” he decides to simply answer, bracing himself for the onslaught of disappointment that is surely about to wash over him, drown him. It doesn’t come.</p><p>“As expected,” Indrem murmurs, almost to himself, before taking a seat; his entourage follows suit, and, after a moment, so too do Jaskier and Yennefer. He doesn’t know what to make of this development.</p><p>“—I’m sorry?” he presses; Indrem looks up at him, decidedly still neutral, before sighing and deciding to explain.</p><p>“This is not a decision to be made lightly. And I am not sure that you have all of the facts. So go on—ask away,” his grandfather offers, and—well. This is what Jaskier wanted, isn’t it? To be able to interrogate Indrem on his offer—on what all of this <em>means</em>.</p><p>He cannot think of a single thing he wants to say.</p><p>“How long do sirens live?” he blurts, then winces, as Mryam smirks and Ilfeck shoots him questioning looks and Indrem merely smiles gently, and—gods. <em>Fuck</em>. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want this to have happened to him.</p><p>He wants to be back in his pool, with the kelpies, and have Geralt never dived in after that stupid fucking box.</p><p>“Two hundred years, give or take,” Indrem answers, and—okay. That works. He and Geralt, really, will have the rest of their lives together, if the witcher is not forcibly retired in a rather permanent way.</p><p>The idea of it—of spending his life with Geralt, and growing old together—causes something to settle inside him, a coiling of fins and scales and talons that nestles comfortably and purrs, almost; he finds himself relaxing physically, too, and looking at Yennefer through his peripheral vision he finds her watching him with something akin to relief scrawled across her face. That’s that, then.</p><p>“Where… where would we go, if I left with you?” he cautiously continues.</p><p>He probes more and more with each question, unfolding the steps of a potential hereafter one by one as his family—his <em>family</em>, estranged and foreign and not at all what he’d expected—put together a bright future, filled with sparkling sunsets glinting on ocean waves, and further extended family with whom he might come into contact, and a great, blue ocean that spans the world over, filled with impossible possibilities for him to extend and learn and grow.</p><p>It is dazzling, and he is blinded by it.</p><p>“And after a few decades, or more—we’d bring you back, and you could go looking for your witcher,” Ilfeck finishes, satisfaction lining his features.</p><p>‘Your witcher’. <em>My witcher</em>.</p><p>“If he doesn’t kill you for it,” Mryam mutters, very, very low—but not so low that Jaskier does not catch the movement of his breath, does not read the curves of his lips, does not listen without hearing and understand what the other siren meant to say regardless.</p><p>“Excuse me?” he says, quietly, and the tension in the room grows taut.</p><p>Mryam looks up. He does not look apologetic. “I said if he doesn’t <em>kill you for it</em>,” he repeats himself, and Jaskier finds himself clenching his hands into fists to stop himself from doing something he would regret. Talons peak out just at the tips of his nails, cutting into his palms, and it serves to ground him, just for a moment.</p><p>“How <em>dare</em> you,” somebody hisses—only this time it isn’t him talking, it’s <em>Yennefer</em>, and her violet eyes are blazing and there is an odd creaking about the house, as though it is reacting—or as though she has gripped its walls, its floors, the furniture that makes the house a home, and is <em>squeezing </em>it all, bending it to her will as she forces herself to remain calm.</p><p>“Enough,” Indrem says softly, though he does not sound as reproachful as Jaskier expected, and he squints at his grandfather, trying to understand the shift in mood here. What brought this on?</p><p>“Why? Witchers have killed enough of our kind—who’s to say that this Geralt won’t react poorly to Jaskier, when he returns changed from his sojourn in the sea?” Mryam sneers, and this time it is Ilfeck who snarls aloud and bares glinting fangs at his brother.</p><p>“You know full well that witchers kill only those of us who attack humans,” Indrem says quietly, his voice carrying despite it; there is a note of power that rings out, one that Jaskier is helplessly drawn to; he wants to <em>obey</em>, and it takes concentration to break through the compulsion.</p><p>“Just because your sister—” Ilfeck begins, his voice a hoarse snarl, but he backs off when Indrem shoots him a scathing look, though he bares his teeth still, unwilling or unable to stow away his fangs.</p><p>“And this one <em>did</em>—” Mryam starts, but Yennefer has already shot out of her chair and is stalking towards the siren with wisps of power gathering about her clenched fists, her footsteps silent where they land lightly against the wood. Even the birds outside have stopped singing. Total silence reigns. She is a lioness, a mountain cat, a diving gyrfalcon: silent and deadly.</p><p>“<em>You</em>,” she breathes, her voice quiet and tightly controlled, “are <em>no longer welcome </em>in my home.” She stops, draws in a deep, shuddering breath. Leave before I make you.”</p><p>There is a short battle of wills, and Mryam loses swiftly and with ill-grace, leaving the house with a snarl still etched across his face and his eyes shining an awful, reflective white.</p><p>Jaskier very, very carefully does not react. He sits perfectly still, frozen in the same position he has been sitting in all this time. He concentrates on blunt fingernails and scarred-over palms and the sound of the ocean, waves crashing in his ears, and he feels his talons retract and the fangs that have been pressing insistently at his gums fade away, leaving him feeling faintly hollow.</p><p>Indrem looks a little ill.</p><p>“That was—”</p><p>“I love Geralt,” Jaskier cuts Indrem off before he can begin to say whatever else he thinks might work to convince Jaskier, to sway him to his side, and his grandfather shuts his mouth with a click. Ilfeck looks rather done with the whole endeavour. Yennefer is looking at him with surprise, though despite it he can still feel the seething rage at Mryam rolling off of her still in waves of roiling malice and furious silence.</p><p>There is a long pause, and then Indrem says, “yes.” He looks resigned.</p><p>“I love him,” Jaskier repeats, “and I don’t need what you can give me to be happy. I have been imprisoned, and tortured, and isolated from my kind for <em>years</em>—for decades, I think, and now I just want to be happy. I want to be <em>free</em>. And I don’t want to do the sensible, logical, thing, because I’m tired of having to wait for what I want.”</p><p>It’s more than he had intended to say, but the words spill out of him without his consent and he is left feeling somewhat bereft as they fill the space around him, painting him in a different light than one he is used to wearing; his kin and Yennefer are watching him like one would a wild animal—cautiously, and curiously, and altogether wholly unknowing of what he will do next. He feels… almost powerful; drunk on the feeling of grabbing and holding others’ attention in such a way. It is unlike when he performs—then, it is not <em>him </em>that draws their atttion, per se, but his music, his singing, the whole of the performance that is made up of his voice and his lute and his showmanship together. It is like they are seeing him anew.</p><p>“Your witcher,” Indrem begins, and it sends a frisson of gratification down his spine to hear the possessive note in that—<em>‘your witcher’</em>. “—he loves you, too?” He frames it as a question, his voice becoming higher at the tail end of it and trailing off as though he is expecting an answer—but his <em>eyes</em>, the set of his jaw and the square of his shoulders; Indrem is resigned to this, Jaskier thinks.</p><p>This siren knew what he would choose—he knew what Jaskier would choose even before Jaskier knew it himself.</p><p>This, more than anything, convinces him of his decision. And Indrem likely can see that last little piece of indecision slip away, see the resolve take him over, see the relief as he realises he is absolutely sure in himself.</p><p>“That’s it, then,” Ilfeck murmurs to himself.</p><p>That’s it.</p><p>~~~</p><p>At the city gates, Indrem offers him a small chest and orders him to take care of himself.</p><p>Jaskier takes it mostly instinctually, reaching out and taking it before he even realises what he is doing. Ilfeck offers him a nod.</p><p>Watching them go is… it affects him more than he’d thought it would.</p><p>The walk over had been uneventful. They’d spoken of Novigrad, her people, her attractions; Jaskier had cautiously asked after Mryam and learnt that his uncle had disappeared.</p><p>“He’ll show up again,” Ilfeck tells him cheerfully. “He always does. He’s shit at talking to people, so whenever he fucks up like he did earlier he goes and hides in a hole for a few weeks until he can face talking to us again, then he comes back.”</p><p>“Sounds awful,” Jaskier comments.</p><p>“It is.”</p><p>They stand silently together, and Jaskier realises—</p><p>He’s never really felt like this before. Not that he remembers. Maybe once, when he was Dandelion—all those years ago, decades, maybe; there is this feeling of <em>family </em>pervading the air about them. It’s new.</p><p>When he’s with Yennefer, with Geralt, it’s almost like he can <em>feel </em>the links that he has built between them—there are strong ties of friendship and romance that he has painstakingly put together. With Indrem and Ilfeck, there is the knowledge that they are kin—the sound of the ocean in his ears, the smell of sea salt and seaweed and brine, the crashing of waves against rocky cliffs and the feeling of sand beneath your feet.</p><p>He doesn’t know if he likes it.</p><p>There is something to be said for choosing your own family. And he’s startlingly aware, every second that he’s standing here with his grandfather and his uncle, that he hasn’t <em>chosen </em>them—they dropped in on him, out of <em>nowhere</em>, and he would have been just as happy living his life without ever having met them.</p><p>He hasn’t chosen them. And he’s not sure he ever will.</p><p>He has another family, who are more important to him—with whom he is more familiar and can be more intimate with than any blood relation that might come crawling out of the ocean.</p><p>Indrem leaves, Ilfeck in tow, and Jaskier doesn’t watch them go. Doesn’t watch the city gates close behind them.</p><p>It’s somewhat comforting, to know that he <em>does </em>have kin out there—but he doesn’t need them, nor does he particularly want anything to do with them. He has his own family.</p><p>He takes a few, long minutes, just standing, listening to the bustle of travellers entering and leaving Novigrad, before he shakes himself.</p><p>He’s still clutching the small chest Indrem had given him.</p><p>Opening it, he sees—a beautiful, ornate dagger; the metal isn’t one he recognises, but the handle is polished bone, he thinks, and inlaid with lovely chips of seaglass; a beautiful brocade of blue-green-silver.</p><p>There is a leather sheath, and a belt. The sheath has a clip to attach to the belt Jaskier is wearing now—the belt in the chest has more than one strap, and, running a finger across it, he thinks it must be for his <em>other </em>form.</p><p><em>Handy</em>, he muses to himself; his talons and fangs can’t save him from every scrape, and having a dagger on him while underwater is something he hasn’t considered but feels he will end up using.</p><p>He closes the box and slips it into one of the inside pockets of his coat, before turning and setting off back to Yennefer’s home.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt comes back a week later. Rain lashes down on Novigrad, slicking the streets, hammering against the windows and the roof and masking the sound of the witcher opening and stepping through the doorway.</p><p>This is why Jaskier lets out an ungodly shriek when he first sees Geralt standing in the room, dripping wet, a cowl drawn up over his head and covering all but his jaw and his mouth.</p><p>Wet strands of white hair curl at the man’s neck, identifying him as <em>Geralt</em> after a few moments of pure, undiluted fear, during which Jaskier screams, draws his dagger, and leaps about two feet into the air and behind him, clutching at the doorway through which he just walked to steady himself.</p><p>There is a pause.</p><p>Geralt slowly raises his hands to lower his hood; his eyes are suspiciously bright and his mouth looks very much as though it would like to smile.</p><p>“Oh, you bitch,” Jaskier says, and Geralt looks a little bit hurt for a brief half-second before Jaskier is across the room, launching himself at Geralt in a full-body tackle.</p><p>The witcher automatically grabs Jaskier back, arms wrapping around the siren’s waist and back and clutching him tightly. Jaskier presses his face unapologetically into Geralt’s neck; the witcher accepts the contact, and returns the affection, resting his chin atop Jaskier’s head and closing his eyes for a brief minute, while nobody can see him.</p><p>“You’re alright,” Jaskier murmurs into Geralt’s neck; the witcher squeezes him.</p><p>“Aye,” he rasps. “And you?” he pulls away, looking into Jaskier’s eyes with a frown, nostrils flaring as though scenting the bard.</p><p>Jaskier shrugs away from the hold and takes a step back, considering. “Hmm. I’m—alright.” He’s thinking about Indrem, about what Mryam said—about the offer to go with his family and the fact that Geralt hadn’t even known that Jaskier might have left. He doesn’t know that Jaskier chose to stay—for <em>him</em>. “I’m alright,” he repeats, trying to sound more sure of himself, and Geralt only squints at him before dismissing it.</p><p>“Where’s Yennefer?” the witcher asks, frowning again. It is only now that Jaskier notices the blood flecking his jaw, his cheekbones; the darker patches soaking through Geralt’s cloak are not only due to the heavy rain, he thinks.</p><p>“Are you alright?” he asks, but Geralt is already on the move, striding past him purposefully. Jaskier follows him unthinkingly.</p><p>“Yennefer?” Geralt calls, his voice a growling rasp usually reserved for when he’s very, very pissed off or rather more injured than he intends to let on.</p><p>“Jaskier?” comes the reply, and—that’s a bit offensive, really, considering that Jaskier has the voice of an angel and Geralt has the voice of a grizzled old man. Which, thinking about it, Jaskier supposes he is.</p><p>“No,” Geralt grunts, just as Yennefer walks into the kitchen. For a brief, brief moment, Jaskier has a profound feeling of déjà vu as he sees her straighten her back, school her face from the brief flash of shock into an impressive mask of neutrality.</p><p>He is reminded of when he first woke up in her home, and had gone more than a little feral in his attempt to free himself, to tear out of captivity—again. This isn’t the same, not remotely the same, but Geralt is looking at Yennefer the same way that <em>Jaskier </em>had looked at her, when he’d raked razor-sharp talons across her lovely face and then watched her painstakingly knit her skin back together. Geralt is looking at her like he has done something terrible, too.</p><p>Or is <em>about </em>to do something terrible.</p><p>“Yennefer—” he manages to get out, before he sags, his body slumping to the floor awfully with a wet <em>crunch.</em></p><p>“Shit—” Jaskier rushes forward, just as Yennefer tries to dive to catch the witcher from landing painfully, and the two of them reach him just as Geralt’s eyes roll back and his mouth opens, blood pouring forth.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt had been gutted by a griffon. There was still a talon embedded in his gut when he’d staggered through Yennefer’s door. His coinpurse is fat and heavy and his silver sword is still stained crimson, half-dried.</p><p>“He’s an idiot,” Jaskier says, standing beside a dishevelled Yennefer as they look over the unconscious witcher, lying limply in bed.</p><p>“Too fucking right,” she mutters, scratching idly at one elbow. She sounds tired. Her hair is plastered to her forehead and her dress clings to her with sweat. “You’d think he’d learn—”</p><p>“I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to stitch him up. He gets into the stupidest scrapes you can even imagine. I’ve no idea how he survived without me,” Jaskier complains, and Yennefer huffs a laugh.</p><p>“You should go sleep,” he tells her. “No point both of us staying up with him.”</p><p>Yennefer doesn’t argue. She doesn’t question the fact that one of them will be staying up with him, either; rather, she turns and leaves quietly, slumping slightly as she goes.</p><p>Jaskier pulls the chair at Geralt’s bedside slightly closer, taking his seat with a small sigh. He reaches over and brushes a hand over the witcher’s forehead, his silver hair lank and sweat-slicked.</p><p>He draws his hand back.</p><p>Slowly, he takes the time to put Geralt’s belongings back together. He takes the sword out of its sheath, takes the rag from Geralt’s pack, and begins to carefully, painstakingly wipe it clean. He goes over the sheath over and over, wiping the blood and the grime away. The water he uses to clean the leather runs red and black and smells distinctly of death.</p><p>He treats the blade, then puts it away.</p><p>Geralt sleeps on. He needs to keep his hands busy, else he’ll fuss more over the witcher; he still has <em>some </em>pride left. He takes out Geralt’s shirts, takes a needle and thread, and begins to mend.</p><p>Then he sorts Geralt’s potions. He does what he can with the witcher’s armour.</p><p>Finally he admits defeat and goes to sit again by the bed, sinking into the chair with a heavy sigh. Mercifully, sleep takes him quickly.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt wakes in a dark room, smelling of sweat and panic and the soap Yennefer uses on her sheets, and Jaskier.</p><p>He lies quietly for several minutes more, enjoying the peace. He thinks his wounds have been stitched, and the bruises he’d acquired are making themselves known now in full force. His mouth is dry.</p><p>Wincing, he lifts his head, tries to look over at the sleeping siren; a grunt escapes his lips and Jaskier’s eyes fly open.</p><p>“Geralt?”</p><p>He grunts again.</p><p>“Water—um, here,” Jaskier rises quickly, filling a glass from the pitcher across the room and holding it to Geralt’s lips, supporting his head while he drinks.</p><p>“Thanks,” he manages to huff out, and Jaskier puts the glass back before standing and hovering awkwardly at Geralt’s bedside.</p><p>“You’re a fucking idiot,” Jaskier tells him bluntly, unclasping his hands from his front to reclasp them behind his back.</p><p>“—Yeah,” Geralt agrees, because there’s nothing else really to say. “Is there water for a bath?” There’s a layer of sweat and grime and probably blood—both his and that fucking griffon’s—covering him that he really doesn’t want to be wearing for longer than he needs to.</p><p>Jaskier smiles. “Yeah, I’ll give you a hand.”</p><p>Carefully, carefully, they manage it, with Jaskier bearing most of Geralt’s weight—the griffon had gotten a good slash in on his thigh, and while it is stitched up and healing Geralt still struggles to put weight on it—and the two of them leaning heavily against walls where they can.</p><p>Geralt sinks into the tub with a groan.</p><p>Jaskier’s hands are in his hair a moment later, pouring water over his head and scrubbing out the blood and sweat and viscera that clings to the strands.</p><p>Geralt <em>purrs </em>under Jaskier’s hands as the siren rubs soap and oils into his hair, massaging his scalp, before his hands dip lower, rubbing his neck and shoulders.</p><p>Geralt lifts his head, baring his throat, and there is only the slightest hesitation before Jaskier’s hands are there, too, wiping carefully over the skin. It is not so much as he is cleaning the filth off as he is accepting what Geralt is offering—accepting his trust, his affection, his <em>love</em>.</p><p>He swallows at the thought. His throat bobs under Jaskier’s hand, and the siren rubs a thumb down his neck, right over the artery, and Geralt isn’t cold but he shivers anyway.</p><p>There aren’t any words. They don’t need any. Jaskier resumes his slow cleaning, soaping up Geralt’s shoulders and chest and back, and then lower. Geralt sits placidly under his ministrations, shifting when prodded, relaxing his muscles deliberately one by one as the heat of the water seeps into him.</p><p>When they get back to the room, they find Yennefer fitting the last of the sheets over the bed, a pile of used sheets on the floor by the door. “Geralt,” she greets quietly, her eyes flicking over his bare chest—checking his stitches.</p><p>“Thank you,” he answers just as quietly.</p><p>She and Jaskier share a look—he’s too tired to parse it, and he trusts them not to be plotting his murder, or something—before she nods slightly and goes to the door, bundling the sheets into her arms and slipping away.</p><p>Geralt turns to Jaskier. He isn’t sure what he wants, but Jaskier takes charge anyway, steering him to the bed and pushing him down onto the sheets.</p><p>“Do you want to sleep?” he asks, and Geralt nods sluggishly. Bathing had taken a lot out of him.</p><p>Jaskier takes a step back, and Geralt’s hand shoots out to grab the siren’s wrist before he can go too far. Jaskier pauses.</p><p>“Stay?” he asks simply; Jaskier offers him a slight smile, before pulling his wrist free.</p><p>Geralt feels the mattress dip as the siren climbs onto it from the other side, arranging himself neatly on the bed. Geralt waits for a moment, listening to him breathe, before he swings his own legs onto the bed and lying back, allowing himself to sink onto the bed.</p><p>Jaskier twitches the covers over them both, extinguishing the candle on the bedside table as he does so.</p><p>There’s a pause, where both of them lie quietly and listen to the other breathing. They’ve had many nights like this—nights under the stars, nested in bedrolls and furs and beds of leaves, listening to the rustling of the trees and the whisper of the wind across the forest floors.</p><p>There is a new quality to their silence, however; before, the love they felt had been, to them, unrequited; a tension had existed between them they hadn’t even been aware of, or known to look for.</p><p>Now, though… Jaskier rolls over, shuffling up to Geralt and curling up against his side, laying his head on the witcher’s chest and gingerly wrapping an arm around his waist, careful of the new wounds.</p><p>Geralt tugs him closer, laying a hand over the arm the siren has slung around him, tangling their legs together. He shifts, pulling Jaskier more flush against him, nudging his chin atop the sirens head and breathing in his scent—sea salt and seaweed and blood.</p><p>“I’m glad you came back,” Jaskier breathes.</p><p>Geralt hums. “Of course,” he replies, and Jaskier emits a pleased little grumble, burrowing his head further into Geralt.</p><p>He falls asleep far sooner than he’d intended to.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt and Jaskier share a bed for the next six days, until Geralt deems himself healed enough to get back out adventuring and slaying monsters and Jaskier deems Geralt healed enough that Jaskier can probably stitch up anything that goes wrong.</p><p>Yennefer doesn’t like them leaving so soon, Jaskier can tell, but he’s been imposing on her for a month and a half already and he’s itching to get back onto the open road again.</p><p>“Don’t do anything stupid,” she orders him, hugging him tightly and pressing her face into his shoulder, muffling her voice. “You need to look after our witcher.”</p><p>“I’ll do my best,” he promises, hugging her back. “And, Yennefer—”</p><p>She draws back, brushing his hair out of his face as she looks carefully at him. “Yes?”</p><p>“Thank you. For everything,” he says earnestly; she tries to brush it off but he interrupts her before she can. “No, seriously—thank you. And… I love you.”</p><p>She smiles. It’s a bit wet; her eyes gleam and her lip twitches. “I love you too,” she tells him, and he draws her back into another hug.</p><p>Geralt is watching them both silently; when Jaskier draws away, she and the witcher look expectantly at one another. Jaskier slips away to her front room to give them more privacy.</p><p>The sky outside is clear. His lute has been restrung, polished, and packed carefully in its case, of which the stitches have been painstakingly checked and redone where needed. His clothes have been mended and his boots have had the soles replaced, his coat re-waxed, his travel pack basically rebuilt. His dagger is sheathed at his hip.</p><p>Geralt joins him soon enough, his swords strapped to his back and Roach’s saddlebags, packed with food, slung over a shoulder.</p><p>“We’ve a second horse,” he tells him gruffly, and it takes Jaskier a moment to understand what he means.</p><p>“You got me a horse?” he smiles brightly, and the witcher rolls his eyes.</p><p>“It’s grey. A gelding. It should keep up with Roach,” he explains, and they leave Yennefer’s house in high spirits, discussing Jaskier’s new mount as they head for Novigrad’s stables.</p><p>As they walk, Geralt takes Jaskier’s hand.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The ground is frozen and awful and unyielding beneath Pegasus’ and Roach’s hooves as they pick their way between the trees. Shivering pines stand tall and grim around them. A bleak grey sky blankets them all, ringed by the icy peaks of the dragon mountains on the far horizon.</p><p>Jaskier is singing.</p><p>Geralt hasn’t heard him sing—not properly, not like this—since the party. Since before he’d been kidnapped.</p><p>He’d rolled out verses and choruses and small snippets of larger ballads while they’d been staying with Yennefer, and while they’d been small signs that he was <em>healing</em> he hadn’t quite yet been <em>whole</em>.</p><p>Geralt knows that Jaskier will never be as he was. Change is an inevitable facet of life; Jaskier is too vibrant, too indelible, to grow stagnant and flat; what he has suffered will serve only to forge him into something new, something stronger, something all the more vivid because of it.</p><p>The small bursts of song that have slipped through the cracks of his recently-shattered spirit are a promise of regrowth; they are <em>hope</em>.</p><p>And today, Jaskier is singing.</p><p>“—<em>but the story is this, she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss, her sweet kiss—” </em>he murmurs to himself, evidently still composing; it is a lament, sorrowful and powerful, and Geralt finds himself straining his ears for every words, every note of his lute.</p><p>The song is not quite finished, and Geralt can hear Jaskier murmuring to himself over word choice for one lyric or another—but he has drawn enough of his work together that Geralt can hear the story underneath, the greater ballad, and he thinks he knows who he is singing of.</p><p>It is him and Yennefer—their story.</p><p>Geralt remembers that Jaskier twists the narrative to make a greater tale, so he is unsurprised that there seems to be no mention of their reconciliation—and, really, he likes it. He thinks Yennefer will too.</p><p>For now, Jaskier seems to be keeping the composition to himself, so Geralt lets him be.</p><p>“We ought to be in the next town by nightfall,” he says to the siren, after he has stowed away his lute. The sun has dipped low on the horizon, but the gentle incline they have been following has begun to level out and Geralt can hear faint whispers of a settlement on the wind that whips across the plains; it is just behind the next crop of trees, he thinks.</p><p>“Good. I need a bath,” Jaskier scrunches his nose, evidently displeased by the feeling of a day’s worth of grime under his clothes. “Apparently, all this time living in a home has spoilt me for travelling.”</p><p>“You aren’t the only one,” Geralt concedes; he himself feels itchy and uncomfortable under his shirt. “Roach is tired, too.”</p><p>Jaskier hums. It is faintly accusatory. “Of course,” he answers; Geralt hides a smirk at the siren’s tone, “it is <em>Roach </em>who has grown unused to this.”</p><p>To be fair, neither of the horses are as bright-eyed as when they’d broken camp this morning, and after a week on the road Roach is snappish and Pegasus less boisterous than before they left Novigrad. A night in the stables will do both of them good.</p><p>And a night in the tavern, in a proper bed and after a proper bath, will do wonders for Geralt and Jaskier both.</p><p>The horses are heaving for breath and flecked with foam by the time they reach the village. It’s slightly larger than one they ordinarily come across—situated as it is, on the road to a major town like Novigrad—and so they have a choice of which inn they wish to stay in.</p><p>They stable the horses, ensuring they get a good bed and a rub down, and shoulder into the least crowded of the inns. The barmaid eyes them—eyes Geralt—warily, but takes their order for ale readily enough, and heats food up for them too when Geralt lowers his hood and she recognises his stark white hair.</p><p>Jaskier beams at the witcher as the food is placed in front of them. Geralt rolls his eyes, but he digs in regardless, shovelling in food mechanically.</p><p>A bard has been singing since they first entered; mostly playing upbeat, lively music, he now switches to something slower—romantic.</p><p>Jaskier presses his leg very deliberately against Geralt’s.</p><p>Geralt slings an arm around Jaskier’s shoulder and pulls him closer; they sit flush, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, and manage to finish their food like that.</p><p>He takes Jaskier by the hand and leads him back to their room; the siren’s hand is warm in his, and he can hear him humming under his breath as they walk.</p><p>The water in the tub is still hot; Geralt gets in first and lies back against the tub, and Jaskier steps in after, sinking against Geralt’s chest with a huff. He rests his head against Geralt’s chest, and the witcher carefully lets his chin rest against Jaskier’s head, encircling his arms around the siren in the water.</p><p>“You know—” Jaskier begins, but his throat closes and he breaks off his sentence abruptly. Geralt gives him time; rubs his hand down Jaskier’s chest comfortingly, and the siren leans his head further into him.</p><p>“You know,” Jaskier begins again; takes a breath, “after—after everything they did to me—um. I was… thinking, a bit, about—about you and I, and—” he breaks off, and his voice is <em>choked up</em>, and Geralt’s heart squeezes uncomfortably listening to him.</p><p>“Jaskier,” he rasps, his voice deep and low and hopefully soothing, “I don’t—I hope you know that I don’t expect <em>anything </em>from you.”</p><p>Jaskier chokes out a sob. Geralt squeezes him closer, once, and then releases him.</p><p>“I just—it’s so <em>frustrating</em>. I want—I want <em>everything </em>with you, but—”</p><p>Geralt presses a kiss to Jaskier’s head. The siren bows it forward, exposing his neck, and Geralt continues; he presses a kiss behind Jaskier’s ear, against his neck, atop his shoulder. “We can wait,” he says. “I’ll wait a lifetime for you.”</p><p>At that, Jaskier surges forward, twisting as he does; water splashes out of the tub and neither of them pay it any mind. Geralt freezes, terrified he has done or said something wrong.</p><p>Jaskier grips Geralt’s knee and surges forward; their lips clash terribly, teeth clashing, and Geralt moans into it.</p><p>The siren tips his head back, drawing his lips away. Geralt follows him for just a second, opening his eyes when Jaskier’s lips remain out of reach, to see the siren looking at him with—<em>fondness</em>, Geralt’s mind supplies first, but it isn’t, it’s—love. It’s love.</p><p>“I love you,” Geralt tells him, just because.</p><p>Jaskier grins. “I love you too.”</p><p>Abruptly, the siren stands, water running off him in rivulets; Geralt watches his body lithely unfold with what he assumes is poorly-concealed arousal in his eyes, marking the lean lines and rippling muscle. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, nothing he hasn’t <em>appreciated </em>before, but this time he allows his eyes to linger. Allows his imagination to take the material and run with it.</p><p>Jaskier gets out of the tub, and towels himself off briskly before turning and looking at Geralt. Abruptly he looks unsure. “I’m not—I don’t know how much I can give you tonight,” he says, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, “but—I want <em>something</em>.”</p><p>Geralt nods. He watches Jaskier’s face intently for any discomfort, any <em>twitch </em>that might indicate he is at all distressed, and stands slowly, before stepping out of the tub. Jaskier hands him the towel.</p><p>When he’s dry, the siren steps forward and slips his arms around Geralt’s waist, leaning up and capturing the witcher’s lips with his own.</p><p>It’s hot and slick and incredible, and he groans into Jaskier’s mouth, lifting his hands to delicately grasp the siren’s jaw in one hand and wind his fingers into Jaskier’s hair with the other.</p><p>Jaskier’s hands drop to his arse, and he breaks their kiss to gasp heavily into the siren’s mouth; Jaskier grins against his lips, humming.</p><p>“Okay?” whispers Geralt. Jaskier responds by biting Geralt’s lower lip, hard, and rolling his hips against the witcher’s own; their erections press together and Geralt drops his head to Jaskier’s shoulder with a groan.</p><p>“Bed, <em>now</em>,” he hisses, and Jaskier straightens and jumps backwards, catching Geralt’s hand and dragging him along as he navigates back to their room.</p><p>“You tell me to stop, we stop,” he orders as Jaskier scrambles onto the bed, his legs falling open. His cock is red and hard and lying slick against his stomach, pre-come dribbling onto himself, and he nods desperately at Geralt’s words.</p><p>The witcher stops. “I need to hear you say it,” he tells Jaskier gently, and the siren swallows and visibly pulls himself back together before opening his mouth to speak.</p><p>“I understand,” Jaskier says hoarsely. “Geralt, I—I’m fine, but if I need you to stop, I’ll tell you to stop.”</p><p>That’s enough. Geralt kneels on the bed, taking one long look at Jaskier—needy, wanting, flushed with arousal—before he crawls up the sheets, feeling the dip of the bed beneath him. Jaskier’s legs widen further to accommodate him and Geralt finally, finally covers the siren with his body, heat and sweat trapped between them as he lowers his head and kisses Jaskier deeply. The siren <em>moans</em>, low in his throat—and there’s something else, there, too; something musical and rhythmic, a deep, rasping purr that shoots straight to Geralt’s cock.</p><p>He slots their hips together and the breath punches explosively out of him.</p><p>Below him, Jaskier seems to be in similar straits.</p><p>After a moment of accommodation, the siren ruts his hips up, and Geralt follows the movement, rolling and sliding their cocks together.</p><p>It’s hot and wet and messy, and he isn’t going to last long.</p><p>Jaskier seems to content to slide his hands into Geralt’s hair and tug, desperately; the witcher manages to get a hand between them and grab both of their dicks in one hand.</p><p>The siren <em>keens</em>, a Song at his lips, and Geralt chokes into his mouth, a whine at the back of his throat.</p><p>Jaskier’s nails scratch at his scalp; his legs wrap around Geralt’s hips and squeeze; their kiss can no longer be called as such—they pant into each other’s mouths, desperate, wanton, and Jaskier’s breathing grows more and more erratic before he suddenly drops his hands to the side of Geralt’s face, his neck, digging his nails in, drawing blood. His teeth have sharpened into fangs and his nails are talons in Geralt’s flesh, and the choking scent of sea salt and sea weed and blood is dizzying.</p><p>Jaskier comes with a hiss, Geralt following him over that precipice with a grunt, clenching his teeth. He keeps his hand on them both, pulling them off through their climax and the aftershocks, leaving them be only when Jaskier huffs a quiet laugh and bats his hand away.</p><p>He slumps to the side. Jaskier reaches up to card his fingers through Geralt’s hair.</p><p>“You’re hurt,” the siren murmurs, though he doesn’t sound too apologetic.</p><p>“I’ll heal.” Geralt’s eyes have slipped closed. The pinpricks of pain in his neck are sharp and hot and already fading, he thinks.</p><p>Jaskier hums.</p><p>The quiet settles over them both.</p><p>Eventually, Geralt heaves himself up, before padding to the adjoining washroom and grabbing a rag. He saturates it in the rapidly-cooling water, rings it out, and returns to Jaskier, who has slipped into a light doze on the bed. The siren jerks awake when Geralt re-enters the room and the witcher pauses, allows Jaskier to orient himself, to look up at him and recognise him, before he approaches him and uses the rag to clean him up.</p><p>He tosses the rag aside. Jaskier leans forward and slips a hand about Geralt’s wrist, tugging him forward weakly, and Geralt follows the motion, crawling back into bed and sidling up to the siren. He grabs the blanket that had been unceremoniously shoved out of the way before he pulls it over the two of them.</p><p>Jaskier curls into his side. “Are <em>you </em>alright?” he asks quietly, hesitantly, trailing a finger over Geralt’s chest, before flattening his palm over the hair there.</p><p>Geralt ponders the words. “I’m—Jaskier, I’m fantastic. I promise. This is—” he doesn’t have words for it, what this is, how he <em>feels</em>, but he feels Jaskier’s palm against his cheek and he turns his face into it anyway. He doesn’t know when he closed his eyes. His eyelashes flutter against Jaskier’s thumb.</p><p>“I love you,” Jaskier murmurs.</p><p>“I love you too.”</p><p>They fall asleep entangled together.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt takes more jobs. Jaskier begins to sing more.</p><p>It takes two weeks for them to fall into bed together. This time, Geralt gets his mouth around Jaskier; the siren lasts about five minutes before he comes down Geralt’s throat, and the witcher swallows every bit of it.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It takes three attempts for Geralt to fuck Jaskier. By that time, they manage to have Geralt on his stomach with Jaskier working him over, fucking into him, four separate times—but Jaskier taps out twice before they get much farther than one finger stretching him open.</p><p>The first attempt goes something like this:</p><p>
  <em>Geralt smooths his hand up Jaskier’s inner thigh. The siren moans, lets his legs fall further open, cants his hips further up into Geralt’s other hand, pumping his cock slowly and methodically.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Please—” he bites out; Geralt smiles, and presses a kiss to Jaskier’s knee.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Don’t worry, love,” he murmurs, the siren whimpers. “Are you okay?”</em>
</p><p><em>“Yes—</em>yes<em>, please, Geralt, I need—”</em></p><p>
  <em>Geralt presses another kiss to his leg, further up, before nipping his skin. Jaskier mewls.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Geralt leans back, lets go of Jaskier’s dick, takes the vial of oil and pours more of it over his fingers. He leans further over the siren, presses a kiss to his lips, and slowly, slowly works a finger into his entrance—it’s hot and slick and—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Geralt’s back hits the ground and knocks the breath out of him.</em>
</p><p><em>Jaskier is in the corner of the room, his mouth a gaping cavern littered with razor-sharp fangs, his eyes milky-white mirrors. Blue-silver scales litter his skin, bursting up, leaving thin trails of scarlet blood, spider-webbing across the pale canvas of his arms, his face, the plane of his chest. Talons have burst from his fingers nails, lethal and black-tipped. There is a terrible, terrible pressure on Geralt’s head—until he realises it is Jaskier </em>roaring<em>, his voice a hollow scream that deafens him and calls to him.</em></p><p>
  <em>Geralt flips himself over, considers his options. He’s pressed to the floor still, not wanting to bear the brunt of that rage any more than he has to—and he thanks every deity that might be out there that they’re staying in an abandoned farmhouse, musty and littered with debris from where the elements have smashed the windows in and brought the outside with them, and they are miles away from any settlements.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Jaskier,” he grunts out, his voice distorted and echoey even in his own mind. The siren doesn’t react, only continues roaring, his teeth gnashing in a horrible facsimile of every monster Geralt has ever faced. He will not draw his silver sword. He knows he doesn’t need it.</em>
</p><p><em>“</em>Jaskier!” <em>he shouts again, and the siren finally, finally closes its mouth—but he growls again, low in his throat, a wailing yowl that punches through the room, a whirlwind of chaos, scattered leaves and tossing their discarded clothes about further still.</em></p><p>
  <em>Geralt can only wait. Can only watch as the siren flexes its hands, talons tearing into his skin, blood pooling at his feet. Can only watch as the scales become duller, less brilliant.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Minutes, or perhaps hours, later, the yowl ceases, and the siren blinks, its eyelids closing lazily. “Jaskier?” he cautions, and the siren looks more closes at him, blinking again—and when it opens its eyes, they are no longer flat reflective disks, but a milky blue-white that Geralt recognises. Jaskier’s siren eyes. “How are you?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m—” the siren begins, coughs, retries. “Embarrassed.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Geralt looks around the room. “I actually think you’ve tidied this place up a bit.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jaskier huffs out a laugh. It wheezes out of his throat, his fangs catching and hollowing the sound. “Where’re your swords?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Over there,” Geralt tilts his head to indicate them, and Jaskier frowns over at them. They sit innocuously in their sheathes.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Not going to use them?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They’ve had this discussion before, but Geralt doesn’t mind reminding him. He’ll happily spend a lifetime reminding him. “On you? Never.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jaskier breathes a sigh of relief. Then he frowns down at himself, at the blood that has collected on him. The change never usually affects him like this; ordinarily it is smooth, without complications. “Um.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Geralt watches the siren carefully, then shifts his weight, drawing himself up onto his knees, then back so he is sitting on his haunches. “Do you mind if I come over there?” he asks carefully, sincerely. “I want to help.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jaskier considers him. Then: “okay,” he says, and Geralt cautiously grabs a washrag from the pack that they’d dropped by the door, and a water skein. He flounders, then grabs his potions bag to. Everything in there is for him, but he supposes there might be something in there that he can use on Jaskier.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Here,” he says, alerting Jaskier to what he is about to do; he pours some of the water over the rag, then goes and kneels by the siren. Carefully, gently, and oh-so-delicately, he wipes away the blood, running the rag over the scales. Jaskier flinches at the touch. Or perhaps at the chill of the water.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The siren stares, wide-eyed, as he brings the rag up to his face, gently cleaning away the blood that had come up when the scales had sprouted. He looks… he looks like a monster that Geralt would be paid to kill, to be perfectly honest.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There is no more blood on him. Geralt sets aside the rag. Jaskier looks—and smells—terrified.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Keeping eye contact all the while, Geralt lifts his hand, sets it carefully against Jaskier’s cheek, making sure to brush the pads of his fingers against the siren’s scales. He flinches even as he leans into the touch.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Geralt presses their foreheads together. This is a moment where he could fuck all of it up, irrevocably, if he is not absolutely precise in which words he uses.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m sorry,” he says first, because he is, and Jaskier hums under his fingers. “I love you,” he says then, because it’s true, and now seems like a good time to remind them both of the fact. “You’re beautiful,” he says last, because he doesn’t think he’s ever had the opportunity to tell Jaskier how he feels about his siren form, and this—this gets the nicest reaction from him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The siren leans forward and presses their lips together.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s sharp. It tastes like blood. It tastes like the sea—like the choking, suffocating fear of one who is seconds away from drowning, and knowing that they cannot do anything about it. It tastes like the wild. Jaskier’s tongue is like sandpaper against his own, and his teeth are serrated and draw blood when he licks against them, so he does it again, and Jaskier moans into his mouth.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And then he changes, and Geralt has a lapful of very-much-human Jaskier grinding into him, gasping. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I love you,” Jaskier gasps.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I love you,” Geralt counters, sliding his hands under Jaskier’s ass and lifting him, standing, carrying both of them to the bed. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>This time, he holds Jaskier until he himself is sat on the thin matters, settled against the headboard, Jaskier in his lap still.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Maybe not tonight,” Jaskier tells him ruefully, reaching down to grab both of their pricks in his hand. Geralt’s returning chuckle morphs into a bitten-off groan as his cock is pulled, hard, pressing against Jaskier’s own, the heat seeping into his skin and making his head spin.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Whenever you’re ready,” he answers, breathing into Jaskier’s mouth, and the siren grins and leans forward for another kiss.</em>
</p><p>They’d spent two weeks relearning one another after that. Three days where they’d barely gone near each other at all—kissing and simply holding one another notwithstanding, on the fourth day Jaskier had managed to get a hand into Geralt’s pants and they’d fallen properly into bed together the day after.</p><p>After a week and a half, Jaskier fucked Geralt for the third time. It’s entirely unplanned; they’re in the middle of the forest, and Geralt is covered in vampire blood, and the only oil they have on hand that’s even remotely appropriate for where it’s about to go is the substance Geralt rubs into sores on both his and Roach’s skin; it smells, nice, at least, and it warms quickly under his hands, and Geralt is a panting, sweating mess under his fingers, thrusting desperately into the air, by the time Jaskier sheathes himself in the witcher.</p><p>On the two week mark, they try again.</p><p>This time, it goes something more like <em>this:</em></p><p>
  <em>Geralt kisses his way down Jaskier’s stomach, spreads his knees further apart with his hands.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m okay, please, Geralt,” Jaskier assures him without prompting; Geralt licks a stripe up the siren’s cock, a reward, before pushing his knees to his chest and licking over his hole.</em>
</p><p><em>The result is electrifying. Jaskier yelps, then keens, bucking into Geralt’s face, squirming away from the sensations—toomuchtoomuchtoomuch, Geralt hears him chanting—while squirming </em>into <em>the stimulation too. Geralt is methodical, licking over him over and over, tracing his rim with the utmost attention, occasionally leaning up to lick a stripe over his balls and his cock before diving down again.</em></p><p>
  <em>By the time he wriggles the very tip of his tongue in, Jaskier is wailing, a high keen that occasionally morphs into syllables and bitten-off curses.</em>
</p><p><em>It’s good. It’s </em>so <em>good. Geralt works more of his tongue in, and Jaskier bucks down, meeting him, working for more.</em></p><p><em>“More, please, Geralt, I need—I </em>need <em>more, please—” Jaskier gasps out, more coherent than he’s been in a while, and Geralt grins wolfishly before drawing away.</em></p><p>
  <em>He slicks his finger up—this time with appropriate oil—and traces Jaskier’s hole again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He pushes in, very, very lightly—just the tip—until the siren bucks down, chasing the intrusion, chasing the pleasure, taking Geralt to the second knuckle.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They both freeze. Geralt remains absolutely still. Jaskier’s breath is coming in sharp gasps, and he experimentally rocks his hips down again, groaning as he does so.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Slowly, over many minutes, Geralt works the rest of his finger into Jaskier, sucking his cock into his mouth as he does so.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jaskier is keening again, circling his hips, a string of curses and begging falling from his lips, and his cock is leaking into Geralt’s mouth and it’s so so hard—</em>
</p><p><em>He comes, and Geralt crooks his finger and brushes—something—and Jaskier </em>shouts <em>and cries harder and the windows rattle in their panes and the wineskin that had been on the table next to the bed thumps to the floor, and the sheets tear under Jaskier’s talons, and his orgasm takes him completely.</em></p><p>
  <em>It’s the most incredible thing Geralt has ever seen.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s—there aren’t enough words, in any language that he knows, to describe the exquisite, ethereal being he has before him, coming on his fingers, around his mouth.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He lets Jaskier fall out of his mouth with a pop. The siren is unresponsive.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gently, Geralt lifts himself from the bed, finding a rag to clean the both of them off with. He’d managed to rut himself into the mattress while Jaskier was coming and the beatific expression on his love’s face had just—it had been enough, for him, and now there is a wet spot on the sheets and on his stomach, and Jaskier’s legs are still trembling.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>By the time he returns to the bed, having disposed of the rag, Jaskier has come back to himself.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“That was incredible,” he murmurs happily to Geralt. The witcher feels the frisson of tension and fear he hadn’t realised had built up suddenly melt away. “No one’s ever—it’s never felt like that before.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I can make it feel better,” Geralt chances, tracing a finger down Jaskier’s arm. The siren hums sleepily.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know you will,” he smiles, rolling further into his witcher’s embrace. Geralt holds him, content, and they fall asleep together.</em>
</p><p>After another two weeks, and another occasion where Jaskier gets to fuck the tension out of his witcher, they manage to finally, finally have Geralt take care of Jaskier.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They have travelled west.</p><p>The sounds of the ocean are distant, out of any human’s hearing range—but neither Geralt nor Jaskier are human, and the witcher is sure that the crashing of the waves is just as loud in Jaskier’s ears as they are in his.</p><p>The siren seems withdrawn and melancholic, to those who don’t know him; he is pale-faced and his hands clutch the reins tightly, and his countenance is one of a man walking to their death: the skin around his eyes and mouth pinched, his brows furrowed, casting quick, darting looks all about himself.</p><p>Geralt knows that this is not the case. He is—full to bursting, is the way Jaskier had tried to explain; there’s too much moving under his skin, too many thoughts, too many emotions that he can’t quantify and deal with right now. He has boarded himself up, drawing walls about himself, trying to keep himself grounded in the saddle with the cool air on his skin and the gently sound of hoofbeats beneath them; otherwise, he’d go haring off for the sea, and Geralt really does not want to tear up the countryside galloping after him, lying to harried peasants about what the fuck just bulled through their home with all the strength of a winter storm.</p><p>Eventually, the path hits the rise, and the slow inclination drops away to one long, winding path, with the sea at the end of it.</p><p>Crystalline waters stretch before them. The beach is comprised of soaked sand, littered with seaweed and kelp as the tide draws away, and the surf is white and marbled against the tan ground. The shallows are light blue, the colour of Jaskier’s eyes—the colour of his <em>scales</em>, Geralt notices, and the siren beside him is letting out low keens, soft keens, his fingers working the reins as though he has his lute in hand, fingering the strings.</p><p>Geralt reaches out a hand, brushes against Jaskier’s thigh. The siren ignores him, but the keening stops.</p><p>Further out, the sea becomes teal, a green-blue abyss that sets Geralt’s teeth on edge. He has no love for open water.</p><p>Jaskier is enraptured.</p><p>The horses walk steadily, Roach mouthing at the bit, fussing and trying to jog under Geralt’s thighs, wanting to take advantage of the long track, wanting to <em>run</em>. He keeps his knees tight against her, discourages her from taking that explosive energy and bolting, and she arches her neck and tosses her mane out and snorts, unhappy. Pegasus plods along steadily, nose in the air, pulling faces at Roach.</p><p>It is only an hour’s walk until they are standing on the beach, two sets of hoofprints in the sand behind them, but it feels like days. Or a lifetime, even.</p><p>Geralt dismounts, takes Roach’s reins in his. After a moment, he takes Pegasus’ reins too, holds them under the horse’s chin and gives the gelding a small scratch beneath the noseband. Immediately he ducks his head, upper lip twisting, trying to catch Geralt’s fingers. <em>At least one of the four of us isn’t tense</em>, Geralt muses ruefully to himself.</p><p>Jaskier is frozen still in the saddle.</p><p>Geralt drops both horse’s reins. Roach dances sideways, but doesn’t bolt; she is too well-trained for that. She does paw a hole into the beach, her only concession to the energy that is bursting within her.</p><p>“Jaskier,” Geralt murmurs, his voice low and at odds with the crashing of the waves; the sirens hands are white-knuckled on the leather, the reins loose and thankfully not jagging on Pegasus’ mouth, but Geralt slides his own hands over Jaskier’s anyway and carefully unclasps them. His hands move to the siren’s waist, tugging lightly, and at last Jaskier takes his feet from the stirrups and leans forward, swinging a leg over Pegasus’ hind, dropping to the ground. Geralt holds him still.</p><p>The siren cannot tear his eyes away from the sea. Geralt takes his hand, pulls him forward, toward the ocean, and they walk their together.</p><p>With every step, Jaskier becomes more lithe, more graceful. His eyes change to flat mirrors, though thankfully his blue is mixed in with the white—he has not lost himself fully. He’s still there. Geralt squeezes his hand, and the siren squeezes back, cutting into his palm with razor talons.</p><p>Jaskier pauses. Takes his shirt off. Hands it to Geralt, who clutches it in his other hand.</p><p>Silver-blue scales crawl up Jaskier’s side, mapping out his ribs, skirting the scars there. A long, silken fin sprouts from his back, the spines shivering in the midday sun. Geralt tugs him forward again.</p><p>The minutes their feet hit the surf, Jaskier <em>ripples</em>, a groan torn from his lips—but he holds himself together still.</p><p>He waits until they are knee-deep. Then, viper-fast, faster than Geralt can notice, he grabs the witcher’s shirt and hauls him in for a bruising, bloody kiss—sea salt and sea weed and metal, or blood—and then he’s gone, under the waves, his tail slapping playfully against Geralt’s ankles before disappearing under the waves.</p><p>The witcher watches him go, and wonders when he’ll be back. He fishes in the surf for Jaskier’s trousers, before turning and making the trek back to the horses.</p><p>He builds a fire, laying their clothes to dry beside it. He lays back, watching the sky. At some point, he falls asleep.</p><p>~~~</p><p>He wakes to Jaskier straddling his hips. He’s human, again, and twilight is falling, but the air is warm around them.</p><p>“You’re back,” Geralt murmurs, low.</p><p>“Always,” Jaskier gasps. Geralt notices he has one hand behind him.</p><p>“What are you doing?” he rasps, his lips curling into a smile; he has a very good idea. Jaskier’s cock is hard and leaking against Geralt’s stomach, leaving pearlescent trails of pre-come against him, and Geralt’s own cock twitches at the sight, blood rushing to fill and harden and lengthen his member.</p><p>Jaskier grins, his teeth sharp, eyes full of mischief. “I’ve prepared myself for you,” he whispers, withdrawing his hand and bracing it on Geralt’s chest. Three of his fingers are slicked up and Geralt groans at the sight, at the scent. He sits up, pressing his hands to Jaskier’s waist, claiming his lips in a searing kiss. Between the two of them, they work of the witcher’s shirt, revealing all of him at last. Their clothes are dry by the fire by now.</p><p>Jaskier pushes him back to the ground, and Geralt folds beneath the pressure, going easily. His cock is <em>aching</em>.</p><p>Slowly, intimately, Jaskier lifts his hips, reaching behind for Geralt’s dick, his fingers feather-light over the throbbing length, teasing at the head. Geralt tips his head back and whines.</p><p>“Are you ready?” Jaskier’s voice is low and sultry and Geralt can’t—this is too much, he’s going to burn up here—</p><p>“<em>Jaskier,” </em>he grits out, tongue tripping over the sound of it, a growl trapped in his chest.</p><p>“Mm,” the siren murmurs, before, slowly, slowly beginning to sheathe himself on the witcher.</p><p>It takes every bit of self-possession Geralt has <em>ever </em>had not to buck up into that slick slide, that wet heat, the unrelenting pressure that envelops his cock. It’s more than he’d ever imagined. It is <em>everything</em>; he wishes he were as eloquent as his siren, able to put all that he is feeling into words, but alas, all he can manage is a low keen, quickly swallowed by Jaskier’s lips as he leans forward and captures Geralt’s mouth in a filthy, filthy kiss.</p><p>The angle changes. Jaskier bottoms out. Geralt’s hands are on Jaskier’s hips still, but he keeps them frozen, not wanting to take and claim and bruise as something in him is roaring to do—this is on <em>Jaskier’s</em> terms, and Geralt is not going to hurt him, not ever—not unless Jaskier wishes him to.</p><p>The two of them gasp and pant into each other’s mouths. Geralt’s face is pained, his brows drawn fiercely together, mouth slack beneath the siren’s own silent snarl.</p><p><em>“Move</em>,” he finally manages to gasp out, and Jaskier nods desperately, his hair falling into Geralt’s face, brow pressing into the side of his neck as he ducks his head, sucking skin and flesh from Geralt’s shoulder into his mouth in a harsh bite. Fangs slide in. Geralt whines under the pain, the <em>possession </em>of that one move. His fingers tighten and then relax around Jaskier’s hips—but Jaskier had bucked into him when he’d done so, and so cautiously, he tightens his hold again.</p><p>That seems to be it. Jaskier rolls his hips, raising and then lowering himself, thighs working, riding Geralt.</p><p>“Jaskier, <em>Jaskier, Jaskier—” </em>Geralt chants under his breath, a low rasping growl that rumbles under the siren’s hand, where it is settled on his sternum. The words blend together, an unintelligible mumble; Jaskier himself releases Geralt’s shoulder from his mouth, blood collecting and dripping to the ground, a perfect bite mark on his shoulder. A claim.</p><p>“<em>Mine</em>,” he snarls, voice inhuman. He looks ethereal, balanced atop his witcher, his eyes shining and his mouth full of knives, scales iridescent against his skin.</p><p>“Yours,” Geralt moans, rolling his hips, thrusting up into the siren. They gasp together, the sensation nearly overwhelming.</p><p>“Yes—<em>mine</em>,” the siren repeats, hand slipping up from Geralt’s sternum to his neck. The witcher stays perfectly still, ready to allow this—to allow him to take whatever control he needs, but his hand continues, tracing his jaw, until he is holding Geralt’s face. “You’re mine,” he says, clearly, and Geralt nods, brow furrowing. “And I’m yours.”</p><p>Geralt looks at him in wonder. Takes one of his hand’s off Jaskier’s hip, wraps it around the siren’s weeping prick, begins to pull him off with sharp thrusts. “Mine,” he affirms. Words lost to him.</p><p>Jaskier closes his eyes at that and comes with a snarl. He moves his hips still, chasing the last vestiges of pleasure, clenching around Geralt who follows him moments later, bucking up into Jaskier without abandon—</p><p>The siren slumps onto him, after, come cooling and drying on Geralt’s stomach.</p><p>His hand reaches up to trace the bite mark on Geralt’s skin.</p><p>“It’ll heal,” Geralt assures him.</p><p>Jaskier frowns. “I’m not sure I want it to.” His grin is sharp and toothy when he lifts his head to look Geralt in the eye. “Tells people you belong to someone. You belong to <em>me</em>.”</p><p>“Aye, I’m yours,” Geralt mumbles, his lips tugging into a smile. “I suppose I could try and let it scar.”</p><p>There’s silence. He opens his eyes again, wondering if he’s gone too far.</p><p>Jaskier is looking at him with—with <em>awe </em>in his eyes. “Would you?”</p><p>“Yes,” he replies, without hesitation.</p><p>Jaskier traces the mark again. “Well,” he says after a moment, “I suppose that’s one way of putting a ring on you.”</p><p>Geralt laughs. It’s a laugh that doesn’t sound very often—not a deep, raucous laugh, or one of his chuckles that rings out so often across their campfires. No; this one is light and carefree and giddy with love.</p><p>“I’ll have to find you a ring, then, too,” he says, and Jaskier smiles widely and leans in for a kiss.</p><p>“I love you,” he murmurs into the witcher’s mouth.</p><p>“I love you too,” Geralt whispers back.</p><p>Then Jaskier sits back. “Come on. We need to go bathe—and, luckily, we have an entire ocean at our disposal.”</p><p>Geralt frowns. “I’ll just sit in the surf and wipe off.”</p><p>“No! You’re coming in with me.”</p><p>“Jaskier, I don’t—I don’t like open ocean.”</p><p>That throws the siren off. “What?”</p><p>“I don’t know what it is,” Geralt confesses, a smile curling at his lips despite it—Jaskier looks <em>astounded</em>. Like he can’t honestly believe what Geralt has just said. “I just don’t like that feeling of having <em>nothing </em>beneath me.”</p><p>“You’re afraid,” Jaskier accuses, eyes narrowing, and, well, that’s <em>rude</em>.</p><p>“Witcher’s can’t be afraid.”</p><p>“Well, come in then!”</p><p>“Jaskier—”</p><p>“Geralt,” Jaskier interrupts, a smile on his lips, now, too. “I’m a <em>siren</em>. You’re in love with a siren. You’re <em>marrying </em>a siren. You can’t—you have to come into the ocean. I won’t hear otherwise. I’ll look after you, I promise!”</p><p>Geralt glares.</p><p>“For me?” Jaskier pouts prettily, and—damnit, he knows exactly what he’s doing, the little <em>minx</em>. Geralt’s resolve is weakening.</p><p>He looks out over the ocean. It’s black under the swiftly-falling night. It looks—awful, really, but…</p><p>He turns back to Jaskier, reaches out and takes his hand, allows himself to be hauled to his feet. He heaves in a sigh, giving in. He’ll always give in, for this one. He leans in, brushes their lips together in a kiss, slipping his free hand about Jaskier’s waist.</p><p>Jaskier presses a hand against Geralt’s chest, kisses back slowly.</p><p>Geralt’s resolve breaks, and he whispers against Jaskier’s lips, “—yes. For you. Always.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It begins, as these things usually do, with an idea.</p><p>Surprisingly—or, perhaps, unsurprisingly—it is <em>Geralt </em>who has this idea. He stews over it for weeks, wondering what Jaskier will think, wondering if it is even feasible, wondering what the consequences could be.</p><p>Jaskier eventually comes to Geralt and asks if he regrets <em>them</em>. The two of them, together.</p><p>He’s surprised. “No, of course not,” he answers instantly, eyes dragging over Jaskier, checking for injuries. “Is there something wrong?” he frowns. He can’t smell any injuries on him.</p><p>“Just—you’ve been <em>distant</em>,” the siren tells him, shifting uncomfortably. He looks as though he’s trying to be nonchalant about this, but Geralt can smell the fear and hesitation rolling off of him.</p><p>“I’ve—” Geralt nearly blurts it out then and there, but he’s not sure <em>what </em>exactly he can say and he doesn’t want to share a half-formed thought before he’s ready. But Jaskier’s carefully-constructed façade of  collectedness slips for just a moment and—and Geralt doesn’t want to see that look in his eyes every again.</p><p>“I’ve been thinking,” he says, reaching out and taking Jaskier’s hand between his own, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles in what he hopes is a soothing manner. “I want—what happened to you, I don’t want it to happen to anybody else ever again.”</p><p>Jaskier snatches his hand away. He looks at Geralt through bright eyes, flickering eyes—<em>siren’s </em>eyes. Frightened eyes. “And what about it?” he hisses, voice sharp and teeth pointy. Immediately Geralt begins to backtrack, trying to explain himself.</p><p>“Jas—Jaskier,” he speaks low and quietly, trying to bring Jaskier back, out of the half-human form he’s losing himself in and into a state with a bit more cognizance.</p><p>The siren rumbles, but his eyes return to their natural blue and the smell of the ocean, of <em>drowning</em>, recedes like the tide.</p><p>“The—<em>pet </em>trade,” Geralt clarifies, hesitating just a moment before insinuating that Jaskier had bene a pet. Not because he hadn’t been, but because he <em>had</em>. Jaskier takes a shuddering step back, but doesn’t lose himself. “I want to dismantle it.”</p><p>There’s a beat of silence while Jaskier digests this. Then, “you’re a witcher, Geralt,” Jaskier says quietly. Resignedly. “You don’t—you kill monsters, you don’t <em>help </em>them.”</p><p>Geralt bites back a laugh. “Jaskier,” he begins, “witchers are about the only people who help monsters, because most of the time, we’re seen as monsters too. Yes, I kill creatures—beasts who’ve been terrorising innocent folk. But when I can, when I have the chance, I help them, too.”</p><p>As he speaks, Jaskier’s disbelief begins to melt away, until it is replaced by a cautious (so very, very cautious) sort of <em>hope</em>.</p><p>“We—how?” the siren dares to ask.</p><p>“I don’t know yet,” Geralt has to tell him honestly. “I haven’t got it all figured out yet. But… we’ll get there, I <em>promise </em>you.”</p><p>Jaskier takes Geralt’s hand again, and squeezes it. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>It takes a month or so. A month of travelling south, down the coast, killing monsters for coin, and chasing down tales of smuggling rings and secrets and creatures locked away far from where they should be.</p><p>It’s hard going. With each new false lead, each new whisper that becomes nothing but wind, each story that becomes more and more convoluted the more they dig until it becomes just incomprehensible chatter spewed by the local drunks.</p><p>Geralt does his best not to become disheartened; he needs to stay optimistic, for <em>Jaskier</em>, so he works and he fights and he haggles and he holds his siren close on the nights when everything is just a bit too hard.</p><p>It takes days and weeks and months and night after night of awful, screaming, nightmares, but eventually they get their break.</p><p>They’ve begun with what they know—they <em>know</em>, intimately, that sirens and other ocean-goers are being targeted, that there is a market for them, so that is where they have begun—at warehouses and shipping docks and ferry points, and they haven’t had any luck until now.</p><p>Geralt stands in the doorway to the warehouse. The rain pelts down behind him—the weather here has been awful all winter, and the ground behind him is water-logged, a mire crisscrossed with cart tracks and the footsteps of those unfortunate enough to be forced to traverse it. Geralt himself is covered with black slick all the way up to his knees, his shirt clinging to his skin with rain and sweat and blood, his silver hair plastered to his face with gore. His sword is slicked with filth.</p><p>The night is black and manages to swallow the witcher whole, dressed as he is in viscera. A thunderclap rattles the windows in their panes and a burst of lightning strikes, one after the other, illuminates his silhouette, highlighting the armour and weapons strapped to him, his hair whipping about him like a wild thing’s. A piece of intestine slips from his shoulder and falls to the ground. He pays it no mind.</p><p>The men gambling and drinking in the warehouse have not noticed him yet. He stands, silent, in their midst, waiting for one of them to look up, to lock eyes with the golden-eyed demon at their door; every word they say, mirth fitting around the group like well-worn shoes, only serving to damn them more in his eyes.</p><p>Outside, he had passed an iron cage, gilded with silver and hung with amulets and trinkets and baubles; some that work, some that don’t.</p><p>The cage had held three shivering forms.</p><p>One of them had had their eyes gouged out. Two had had their mouths sewn shut, the third gagged. They’d been bound, tied down to the ground and left to freeze in the rain and the mire.</p><p>He’d gone inside. Pulled the gag away, brushed his finger’s over the creature’s face. It had looked at him with dead eyes, black eyes, flat and frightened.</p><p>“Kill me,” it had whispered, its voice a hoarse rasp. Geralt cannot even tell what it is meant to be—the pen stinks so strongly of every manner of monster, of icy terror, of the stench of decaying bodies.</p><p>“Kill <em>us</em>,” it had pleaded; the two other creatures had turned their heads to listen.</p><p>Geralt regards the three of them. Then he makes a decision, draws his silver sword, and does what he does best.</p><p>He puts them down.</p><p>Now, inside, he listens to the men laugh about the creatures they’ve caught, how much <em>easier </em>it is to take—to take children, how much fun they can have with these creatures before they’re called to sell them on, how the best fucks are si—</p><p>Geralt doesn’t hear the rest of it. The man is too busy choking on steel.</p><p>Two others drop quickly, messily; Jaskier has slashed their throats before they can even scream, his fingers curved into lethal talons, scales bursting from his skin with blood sloughing off his and fangs bared in a wicked snarl.</p><p>Geralt kills the fourth. The fifth drops to his knees, begging; Geralt throws a hand out, giving Jaskier pause, before he sheathes his own sword. The man cries, pleads, gives fervent gratitude.</p><p>“Tell me who hired you,” Geralt says. His voice is steady. He stands tall and square and, beside him, Jaskier bristles with spines and scales and knife-like teeth and talons that can lop entire limbs off should he put his mind to it. He is feral, undiluted chaos, restrained only by the witcher’s golden gaze on his lover, grounding him. Loving him.</p><p>The man pauses, then spits at his feet.</p><p>Jaskier makes an awful, choking noise—the sound of boulders grinding against one another on the ocean floor. His lips spread wide. He is laughing.</p><p>“Are you really more afraid of them than you are of us?” Geralt asks when the din has subsided. His voice remains calm and steady because Jaskier is shaking and shrieking, and he is making enough racket for the two of them.</p><p>Blood bubbles from the man’s lips. His lips split into a grin. “Yes,” he grits out, his voice hoarse, rough from screaming and slick from the blood and altogether nearly unintelligible.</p><p>Jaskier roars. It’s an ugly sound. An evil sound. Geralt smiles as the force of his voice rushes past him, whipping his slicked hair against him, curling deliciously against his heated skin, cooling him. The witcher braces himself for the next roar, the physical punch of noise that is about to erupt from his jaws; it comes and snaps the man’s head back, throwing him to the ground.</p><p>The man giggles again. Blood pools. He dies slowly.</p><p>“Geralt, look at this,” the witcher hears, and turns, finding rather a strange sight. A half-siren, half-man creature, silver-blue scales littering his skin. Lethal talons delicately balance a sheaf of paper between them, careful not to slice through them, his white-mirrored eyes flickering over the text before him.</p><p>Geralt stalks over. He uses the hem of his shirt to haphazardly wipe most of the blood off his sword, before sheathing it, deciding to clean it all later.</p><p>“What’s this?” he asks, his voice a low rumble, veiled by the roar of the rain on the metal roof.</p><p>“Files,” Jaskier answers tersely.</p><p>“About—”</p><p>“It’s information. Reports, from ships, from—they’re calling these guys <em>catch and tag </em>teams. See-and-tee. C&amp;T. Er—inventories, registers; this looks like a… catalogue? Of—oh, <em>gods</em>—” Jaskier’s hands have begun to tremble too violently for the papers to remain stable where he has them balanced atop his talons. Geralt takes them from him carefully.</p><p>He leafs through the papers, scanning the information set out.</p><p>“This is all of the shipping yards on the coast that deals with creature trafficking,” he says stonily. Jaskier inhales sharply.</p><p>“Sounds like a hitlist,” the siren hisses. Geralt nods in agreement.</p><p>Then he folds the paper away and secures it inside his armour, pressed tightly between bands of leather where it will be kept dry and safe. “We should go.”</p><p>Jaskier hisses again, swaying slightly. Geralt narrows his eyes at him.</p><p>The siren’s eyes go silver-mirror-flat again, glaring at Geralt, fangs bared in a silent snarl. The witcher simply waits it out. Eventually, Jaskier snaps his jaws shut, though he keeps his eyes narrowed.</p><p>“Come here,” Geralt murmurs, stepping forward to sling an arm around his siren’s waist, pulling him forward, tilting his face down just slightly. A half-moment’s hesitation later, Jaskier steps into the hold, pressing their bodies flush together, lifting his head the bare half-inch’s difference, catching Geralt’s lips between his own.</p><p>It’s bloody and messy and Geralt’s lip, his tongue, is scored slightly against Jaskier’s serrated fangs. The siren moans into the familiar taste—the witcher can never seem to resist kissing his siren when he’s like this, and the taste of Geralt’s blood in their mouths has become comfortable, easy.</p><p>Jaskier bites Geralt’s lip, his teeth blunt and human, before stepping away. Geralt hums.  </p><p>“I’m cold,” the siren complains, looking up at Geralt through thick lashes. “Care to warm me up?”</p><p>Geralt rolls his eyes. “Covered in blood?”</p><p>“Hm. Like we’ve not done it covered in blood before.”</p><p>Geralt only chuckles, before slinging an arm around the siren’s shoulders and tugging him forward, stepping through the blood that seeps through the cracks in the stone, spiderwebbing across the ground in a crimson lattice that collects in a thickening pool in an apparent dip in the centre of the room. Jaskier allows himself to be pulled along, tucking himself against the witcher’s side, shivering slightly as the adrenaline fades and he’s left weak-kneed and drained.</p><p>Pegasus is flecked with red as Jaskier hauls himself aboard. The gelding stands patiently, paying no mind as their reins are fussed with and Geralt checks his girth one last time, before patting the siren on the knee and moving to his own horse.</p><p>Roach snaps at him impatiently while he mounts up himself. The mare tosses her head, shifting beneath him, and he allows her to move off, muscles bunched and trembling. She wants to be <em>off</em>.</p><p>~~~</p><p>That is how it goes.</p><p>They find more warehouses. More docks. More catch-and-tag—<em>C&amp;T</em>, as they quickly become known—teams. More creatures that need to be put down.</p><p>It becomes almost a ritual. How many times do you need to do something before it becomes a habit? This is what these excursions become. Habit. Ritual. Routine.</p><p>One by one, they go down the list of warehouses, methodically clearing out each and every nest. Jaskier stitches up wounds and Geralt washes blood out of their clothes and they sharpen Geralt’s swords and Jaskier’s knife. The sun rises and sets and the seasons change and the blood pools about them, drenching them both.</p><p>Whispers of a feral witcher blaze across the Continent. Stories, songs, ballads of a witcher exacting justice follow them soon after, sating a lust for stories of murderous vigilantism, that diverts the common tale of nobility coming out victorius, that the commonfolk hadn’t even known they’d had.</p><p>Three months into their crusade, they pour into a stone building, low-roofed and defined by shadowed doorways and small windows. Like water they race through the hallways, by now as familiar with one another as they are with themselves, moving together like oil on water, slick and terrifyingly proficient.</p><p>The men are cut down quickly. They die slowly. Blood splashes across the ground, painting the dark stones darker, crusting into the siren- and the witcher’s skin like salt from the sea.</p><p>In the basement, they find three creatures, bound. Two of them are tagged for transport to their new owners, and they watch Geralt and Jaskier enter their prison with dull eyes, dead eyes. Uninterested. The witcher does them the courtesy of a quick death.</p><p>The third… the third looks at them accusingly. She is pale-faced and dark-haired and dark-eyed and there is fire in her still; Jaskier can <em>smell </em>it. He licks his lips and bares his teeth. Geralt shoots him a quelling look.</p><p>“The men upstairs are dead,” he tells her; she bares sharpened teeth at them and hisses.</p><p>“I was you, once,” Jaskier says, unable to look away. She is beautiful and deadly. He’s reminded of the creature he saw in the ocean in his dreams—larger than life, terrifying, incomprehensible. He does not know what she is and he is drawn to it.</p><p>“What do you mean?” she asks him; her voice is rusty and coarse and the spittle that collects at her lips is flecked with blood. He’s drawn to her teeth—her canines are sharpened and elongated, like a wolf’s, and he’s never seen anything like it.</p><p>“A pet,” he murmurs. A hand at his elbow draws him out of his thoughts; he turns and looks at Geralt and is blinded by the gold of his eyes.</p><p>It’s possible he’s been at this with too few breaks for too long.</p><p>“I’m not a pet,” she spits. He smiles.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“What’s your name?” Geralt asks her, patting at his pockets; Jaskier notes his movements idly. His head is swimming.</p><p>“Shri—Ren. Wren,” she tells them, stumbling over her words as she decides upon a name. It’s not unlike when he’d first chosen <em>Jaskier </em>for himself. It’s good enough for him.</p><p>“Wren,” he rolls the name on his tongue. He knows the feeling of a new name, how it is as ill-fitting as unbroken shoes. The more you hear it the better it sounds.</p><p>“Here,” Geralt says, stepping forward with a skeleton key he has produced from—somewhere. Wren watches him with black eyes and opens her mouth—perhaps unconsciously, her teeth displayed for the predator stepping towards her. Geralt tosses her the key.</p><p>She catches it, reflexes lightning-fast despite the circumstances, the evidence of abuse on her skin. Awkwardly she unlocks one wrist, then the other, before bending down to pull the manacles from her ankles. She rises and fixes them both with a hard stare. “Who are you?”</p><p>“I’m Geralt of Rivia, a witcher,” Geralt introduces himself and Wren jumps backward, snarling, eyes flashing red. <em>She smells like nighttime</em>, Jaskier muses absently; he’s feeling distinctly unthreatened, and, by the looks of it, so is Geralt; the witcher hasn’t even reached for his sword.</p><p>“I’m Jaskier,” he tells her; her eyes flick to him. Her irises had flashed from brown to red and back again, and he’s curious to see the change again. “A siren,” he adds, in case she hadn’t put that together from his appearance, talons and serrated fangs and scales on display. “Geralt—he’s here to help. He saved me. And them—” he indicates the corpses cooling beside them, “—we’ve met a hundred like them, and they don’t get better. Whatever you’re thinking—he’s saved them too.”</p><p>Wren pauses to look at the bodies, a complicated expression flashing across her face, before she shrugs, apparently dismissing them. She looks at Geralt, peering curiously at him, the fear from before having vanished.</p><p>“A witcher,” she murmurs to herself. “I’ve never met one.”</p><p>“And you?” Geralt counters, meeting her gaze steadily. His hands don’t stray from his side—he learnt his lesson before, when he’d first faced Jaskier. “What are you?”</p><p>“I’m a princess,” she smiles toothily, “born under a black sun and cursed by a wizard.”</p><p>“A wizard?”</p><p>Wren hums. “He’ll get his.”</p><p>Jaskier’s vision swims again. He doesn’t want to pass out, though this eventuality is looking more and more likely the longer they stay here. Geralt apparently notices his love’s condition and straightens his spine, squares his shoulders, and apparently comes to a decision.</p><p>“We’re going. Will you come with us?”</p><p>Wren considers this. “What else is there?” she asks wryly, licking her lips. She’s done it several times, now, Jaskier notes; a nervous tick of hers that is reassuring, somehow—whatever has happened to her, she’s still startlingly human.</p><p>“You could go and stay with some sorceresses I know. Or priestesses, perhaps,” Geralt offers, watching her carefully. She doesn’t look immediately averse; she also doesn’t look particularly eager.</p><p>“You don’t have to make a decision right away,” Jaskier hurries to assure her, wanting to get out and into the fresh air expeditiously, before he fucking passes out and Geralt has to carry him out of here. “You can come with us just for now, and leave later, if that’s what you want.”</p><p>Wren pauses, then nods. Geralt eyes her, then Jaskier, before motioning for the woman to leave first, stepping through the pools of blood as though they aren’t even there and making her way up the stone stairs, awash with blood, with what is likely a false bravado. Jaskier admires her for it anyway. She moves fluidly, though blood is crusted to her skin under the simple shift she wears, and where blood isn’t streaked across her, bruises colour her black and blue and yellow and green. She holds herself like she’s used to wearing finery. She moves like she has been trained to kill. She bears the evidence of her abuse like one who has been abused before.</p><p>He exchanges a look with Geralt; evidently the witcher has come to the same conclusion, and they follow her somewhat warily.</p><p>At the top of the stairs, Wren pauses, taking in the slaughter that has painted the small, dark building a bloody crimson.</p><p>“You did this?” she asks of Jaskier; she sounds more curious than alarmed.</p><p>“Geralt and I,” he confirms.</p><p>“They suffer?”</p><p>“Yes.” It’s Geralt who answers.</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>They take a moment to survey the bloodbath. It’s been three months since they began this; Jaskier wonders what happened to the creature who had so thoroughly lost control after killing the men responsible for torturing him, who had fled and nearly destroyed himself in the fleeing. He wonders when the blood stopped bothering him. He wonders when killing had become so easy.</p><p>“You’re in your own head again,” Geralt murmurs, placing a heavy hand at the nape of his neck and squeezing gently. Jaskier drops his head back, breathing deeply. Ahead of them, Wren navigates the slumped corpses with almost disturbing ease.</p><p>“Just thinking,” he says. “Wondering when killing stopped being hard.”</p><p>Geralt hums. “Wondering if you’re a monster again?”</p><p>Jaskier rolls neck, looking over at Geralt solemnly. “I’m beginning to think you know me too well.”</p><p>Geralt smiles. It’s one of those rare ones that truly reaches his eyes; blood still drips from his hair, matted against his cheek, and he looks feral and wonderful and Jaskier can’t resist stealing a kiss.</p><p>“Is this what you two do?” Wren interrupts, sounding faintly scandalised. She’s standing ankle-deep in the corpses of men who had captured, tortured, and in all probability raped her, and seeing a witcher and a siren <em>kissing </em>is what managed to scandalise her. “You murder humans masquerading as monsters as foreplay and then—what?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Jaskier smirks at her, pressing himself against his witcher. “Murder—really gets my blood pumping.” Her lips quirk in an involuntary smile.</p><p>“Get anything else pumping?”</p><p>“You two are awful,” Geralt interrupts, deadpan, before Jaskier can open his mouth to reply. “I’m beginning to regret bringing you along, Wren.”</p><p>“Oh, witcher, you haven’t seen anything yet.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Travelling to the camp is nearly awkward. Geralt and Jaskier both go to mount up; Wren fixes them both with unimpressed stares before emphatically declaring that she won’t be riding double with either of them.</p><p>Geralt and Jaskier share uneasy looks. Neither of them particularly wanted to relinquish their own horses to her—there was no telling what she would do once mounted, and they didn’t particularly want to see her galloping off into the sunset on one of their horses.</p><p>Fortunately, there is a small shed attached to the side of the building. It is exactly as dark and damp and uncomfortable as the stone prison they’d just exited.</p><p>Inside they find a piebald mare. She sinks her teeth into Geralt’s arm as he runs a hand over her head, checking her eyes, her nose, her teeth; she’s young still. He jerks away, hissing.</p><p>Jaskier laughs. “She and Roach can be friends,” he tells the cursing witcher; Geralt just looks at him, unimpressed.</p><p>Geralt continues his review. The mare is stockier than Pegasus, but not so well-muscled as Roach. She looks… well, to put it nicely.</p><p>“Fat,” Wren says. She looks delighted. “And grumpy.”</p><p>“She’ll lose the weight, and put it into muscle. It won’t do her any harm going into winter to have that extra fat on her,” Geralt assures the both of them, running a critical eye over the mare’s legs, her back. He checks her hooves, pronounces them in decent condition, considering her stabling.</p><p>Finding a saddle that fits her halfway decently takes some time; evidently the mare has not been worked in a while, and whatever she’d been tacked up in no longer fits her, what with the extra inches to her barrel. They make do with Geralt doing something complicated-looking with the flocking of one of , and Jaskier watches him do the whole thing, while explaining what he’s doing, without retaining any information at all about saddle fit and adjustments that can be made. He exchanges a glance with Renfri, who looks equally uncomprehending.</p><p>Eventually, they have the piebald mare tacked up, her black-and-white hide conspicuous beside the chestnut and the grey.</p><p>“She needs a name,” Jaskier tells Wren.</p><p>“She’s a horse.”</p><p>“She deserves a name!”</p><p>“Horses die all the time. I don’t want to get attached.”</p><p>In the front, Geralt snorts in agreement. Roach snorts too, though Jaskier doesn’t imagine it’s in agreement.</p><p>“I’m going to name her,” Jaskier decides.</p><p>“You do that,” Wren says dryly.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Wren joins them a few times on their… crusades, for lack of a better word. She revels in the killing, revels in making men bend to her will before taking their lives, revels in the power and control she takes back with each throat slit, each heart ripped out.</p><p>“Stregobor,” she says one day. Jaskier doesn’t recognise the name—Geralt thinks he’s heard it before, from Yennefer, but he cannot connect a name to a face.</p><p>The two of them remain silent; Wren responds badly to being pressed for information, they’ve found—it’s best to wait for her to volunteer it. They only need to be patient.</p><p>“He—I need to kill him.”</p><p>She doesn’t tell them why, and they don’t ask. Geralt confides quietly to Jaskier, afterwards, that he thinks Stregobor is a wizard—that he had performed tests on girls born under an eclipse. Perhaps he had been the one to curse Wren. Perhaps not. Regardless, they both determine not to get in her way should she choose to go after him.</p><p>Which she does, eventually. She doesn’t say goodbye, just disappears in the night; Geralt and Jaskier are both awake, wrapped up in one another, while she saddles Kestrel—Kes, they’ve taken to calling her—straps her bags onto the mare, and rides off into the darkness.</p><p>“She’ll be fine,” Geralt murmurs to Jaskier. The siren snorts, trails a finger down Geralt’s chest.</p><p>“I know,” he answers. “Think we’ll see her again?”</p><p>“Oh, definitely.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>They don’t see her again. They hear, later, of an attack in Blaviken—the town’s wizard and a cursed woman fighting bloodily in the streets, causing all sorts of destruction. The two tore one another almost to pieces and, when they were left bleeding out on the floor from the damage they’d caused one another, they’d been picked up and soundly booted out of the town in opposite directions. Whether Wren is dead or not, Jaskier has no idea—but he likes to think that she is.</p><p>He likes to think that she managed to lay aside her rage. That she decided enough was enough, that murdering this wizard wouldn’t give her the satisfaction nor the fulfilment she craved, and that she could move on.</p><p>Somehow, he doubts it.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Six months after they begin this—mission, pursuit, quest—they arrive at a shipyard to find broken shackles and three dead vampires and a C&amp;T team on their knees, hands up in surrender.</p><p>“We had two sirens, too, but we threw them back,” one of them—Geralt marks him as the ringleader—speaks up. Jaskier snarls silently, and the four men gulp at the very not-human teeth he bares, the reflection of his eyes.</p><p>“And these?” Geralt motions his head to the dead things on the floor.</p><p>“Couldn’t—they were sent up here from one of the warehouses further south, before you guys could hit it. We, um—when we heard you were coming here, we cut ties. We’re done. We don’t want to fight anymore.”</p><p>Geralt and Jaskier look at each other.</p><p>
  <em>What the fuck.</em>
</p><p>“What?” Jaskier asks, because that’s about the only thing he can say.</p><p>“We’re done. <em>Done</em>. The stories of you two—you’re legendary. We’ll give you whatever you want—just <em>please </em>don’t kill us.”</p><p>Jaskier bristles. Geralt can see that he doesn’t like it—that he wants to make these fuckers <em>pay</em>.</p><p>“What can you tell us?” Geralt cuts in, before Jaskier can do something drastic—like murder the lot of them. He’ll pay for this later, he knows; there is a very telling silence coming from his siren where ordinarily there would be a hiss or a yelp or some other indication of his displeasure, and he knows that this time he’s really hurt his love.</p><p>The ringleader gulps, and begins to speak.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They end up with another list. It’s longer. Geralt even recognises some of the names.</p><p>They’re back at camp, night falling quickly, two rabbits roasting over a cookfire.</p><p>“This could keep us busy for <em>years</em>,” Jaskier murmurs, almost to himself. He recognises some of the names too. His fists are clenched and white-knuckled on the sheet of paper. He seems to have forgiven Geralt for his earlier interruption. “We should go talk to Yennefer.”</p><p>“We should,” Geralt says, though he sounds preoccupied. Jaskier spares him a glance.</p><p>“She’ll be furious enough with us for not inviting her along for the first few months,” Jaskier turns back to the rabbits.</p><p>Geralt hums. He’s still distracted. Jaskier sneaks another look; he’s fussing with something in his hands, turning it over and over between his fingers, something small and undistinguished, and Geralt is fixated on it.</p><p>He gives a mental shrug. If the witcher cares to share, he will.</p><p>Suddenly Geralt huffs. It’s an odd noise—caught between a snort, and a gulp. Jaskier looks up at him—worried he’ll find the witcher suddenly choking to death, or something—to find Geralt staring back at him determinedly.</p><p>This… <em>cannot </em>be good.</p><p>“She’ll be even more furious if we don’t tell her about <em>this</em>, right away,” Geralt tells him solemnly, opening his hand to reveal what he had been fiddling with.</p><p>It’s a ring.</p><p>Silver, rippled and twisted over itself, with a diamond set in the centre.</p><p>He cannot imagine how much it must have cost. He looks up, back to Geralt, who looks—strangely vulnerable. As though he can’t be sure Jaskier is going to say yes.</p><p>Well, that just won’t do at all.</p><p>In an ungraceful tangle of limbs and determination, he crawls to his knees, before launching himself at Geralt.</p><p>The witcher is not expecting this.</p><p>They collide roughly, Jaskier manoeuvring with all the grace of an arthritic boar, sprawling across the witcher before claiming Geralt’s mouth with his own in a messy kiss.</p><p>“Mph,” Geralt manages to get out before he is attacked, arms coming up to steady Jaskier, braced on his hips.</p><p>The kiss holds, and becomes hot and slick and filthy, before Geralt manages to eke himself out some space, separating the two of them.</p><p>“I didn’t get to ask,” he says, sounding rather put-out about it.</p><p>“It was always going to be yes,” Jaskier assures him.</p><p>“I’d still like to ask.”</p><p>This feels… huge, even though really this is just the official writ of recognition for their relationship. A ring doesn’t make it any more genuine, or valid.</p><p>But <em>hell </em>if it doesn’t feel that way.</p><p>“Go on, then,” Jaskier tells him, trying to sound fond and indulgent. He thinks it comes off rather too low and serious for that, unfortunately.</p><p>Geralt takes Jaskier’s hands between his. The ring is held delicately between Geralt’s thumb and forefinger. Jaskier can feel it there, pressing against his own hand, and his head rather distressingly skips a beat.</p><p>Geralt offers him a tiny smile, and Jaskier shoots back a nervous grin, and then they’re both blushing and Geralt clears his throat, and—</p><p>“Jaskier,” he begins, serious, and <em>fuck. </em>This is real. Jaskier is helpless in his grasp.</p><p>“I’m not… the best, with words,” he starts, and he sounds like he’s rehearsed this. Jaskier squeezes his hands encouragingly, feeling his eyes begin to well; he’s trying his hardest not to put his witcher off, so he blinks them back furiously. “We both know you’re the wordsmith here. So I’ll just say this. The first time you met me, you saved my life—and not many people have ever done that before. You dragged me out of that lake like it didn’t matter what I was, and then you invited yourself into my life like you had a right to be there.”</p><p>He breaks off to lean forward and wipe the silent tears from Jaskier’s cheeks; the siren lets him, sure that he’ll only cut himself with his own talons if he were to try it now—because of course, with the emotion that threatens to burst from him, he has shed much of his human skin. His eyes are silver-blue and blurred with tears.</p><p>He offers Geralt a watery smile, and a wet laugh, and Geralt smiles quietly back before continuing. “You have settled—<em>so completely </em>into my life, that I can’t remember what it was like before you were in it. And I don’t ever want to learn what it would be like if you—if you left.” The words had been nearly tripping out of him, running over one another in his eagerness to get them out, these vows he had been working on, and Jaskier is nodding his head and squeezing Geralt’s hands and all he can do is let the tears run down his cheeks while his witcher struggles with his words.</p><p>“Jaskier… it would be my <em>honour </em>if you stayed,” Geralt finally collects himself, drawing himself up as though preparing for a battle, and Jaskier straightens his own shoulders. “Will you marry me?”</p><p>Later, they tell people that Jaskier had immediately replied, <em>“yes!”. </em>That he had accepted the ring, and thus commenced a night of passionate and profoundly emotional lovemaking.</p><p>In reality, he’s crying too hard to make intelligible words, able only to desperately nod his head and then devolve into fresh sobs when Geralt slides the ring onto his finger.</p><p>The witcher pulls his siren onto his lap, nuzzling his neck and hiding his face, and Jaskier clutches at the back of his neck, holding Geralt close.</p><p>He doesn’t know how long they stay there, simply <em>being </em>together, but eventually he shifts, and Geralt draws his head back, and—<em>oh</em>. It looks a bit like he’s been crying.</p><p>“I love you,” is all he can think to say.</p><p>“I love you too,” comes the wet reply, Geralt sniffling just a little bit, before bringing their lips together.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They were right.</p><p>Yennefer is <em>incensed</em>.</p><p>“Ow—fuck! Yen! Come <em>on</em>—”</p><p>“<em>Yennefer</em>—”</p><p>“I can’t <em>believe </em>you two are getting <em>married </em>and didn’t think to <em>fucking tell me—</em>”</p><p>“I think we’ve made a mistake here, love,” Geralt whispers to Jaskier from where he has very deliberately placed himself between the siren and Yennefer’s wrath. Another shot of flame, aimed approximately in their direction, corroborates his thoughts.</p><p>“I think the crazy witch needs to get over herself,” Jaskier replies, not nearly as quietly, and Yennefer shrieks.</p><p>“I can’t <em>believe </em>you two!” Magic crackles up her arms, her beautiful eyes flashing, and Jaskier shoots her a grin. He flashes the ring at her.</p><p>“Aren’t you happy for me?”</p><p>“Of <em>course </em>I am,” she hisses, launching herself at the siren, bypassing Geralt completely so as to wrap the siren in a hug. “I’m so fucking happy for you—for both of you.”</p><p>“The burn marks really hammer that home,” Geralt says dryly. Yennefer sends sparks at him, singing the ends of his hair, and Geralt shoots her a filthy look before walking further into her home, admiring the changes.</p><p>“It’s very… you,” he compliments with a sharp grin.</p><p>Truly, it is. The building had once been an inn, before vampires had taken over and turned it into rather a menacing fortress with a lovely wine cellar and opportune travel connections to Oxenfurt.</p><p>Now there are both skulls adorning the walls and doorways, and an enormous first floor where the vampires had knocked down most of the walls, turning a dozen small traveller’s rooms into three bedrooms, a washroom, and a torture room, that Yennefer seems to have artfully repurposed into her sorceress’s lair full of potions and spell-books and other thinks he doesn’t want to be investigating.</p><p>“Thanks,” she says, face still buried in Jaskier’s neck.</p><p>“Do you still get people knocking on the doors, asking for rooms?” Jaskier wonders aloud.</p><p>“The vampires took over about a hundred years ago, so, no.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>“Novigrad was getting a bit old for me,” she says conversationally, when they’re all settled in her sitting room with a glass of wine in hand.</p><p>“I quite liked it,” Jaskier replies absently. “I studied in Oxenfurt,” he offhandedly says, registering the shock on Geralt and Yennefer’s faces with a slight smile before deciding to explain. “Only shortly. I spent a few months here, years and <em>years </em>ago, before I was ever taken from the ocean, after my mother had died. And then after I’d escaped from them the first time, I tried to strike out on my own on a couple of occasions—Oxenfurt was the first and only major city I ever visited. It was… too much. Until Geralt.”</p><p>“You never did explain that, I don’t think,” Yennefer swallows the last of her wine, then summons the wine bottle from Geralt’s side so she might refill it. They’re all a few glasses deep, and tongues have loosened.</p><p>“Geralt… made me feel safe. I figured I wouldn’t be bothered by anybody with him at my side,” Jaskier explains, and Geralt raises his glass in silent salute. They’ve spoken of it between themselves; he knows all the words that Jaskier isn’t saying.</p><p>“I suppose you don’t <em>need </em>him anymore, what with all the gratuitous murder you’ve been indulging in recently,” Yennefer muses, rather pointedly, raising an accusatory brow at the both of them. Geralt just smiles at her, and Jaskier flashes a wicked, serrated grin.</p><p>“Mmh,” he hums, “though he’s mine, now. He’s not going <em>anywhere</em>.”</p><p>“Sap,” Yennefer accuses them both, when they pause to look at one another with love-stricken gazes. Half-heartedly she throws a cork at Jaskier. “C’mon, then, spill. Tell me about this wedding.”</p><p>Jaskier exchanges a look with Geralt. The witcher communicates that this is Jaskier’s show. Geralt got it started—the rest will be driven by <em>him</em>. “We, er—I think we’re going to wait until this mission of ours is done—or as done as we can get it,” he answers neutrally, because really, he hasn’t given it a lot of thought. He has decades and decades left with his witcher. Why rush?</p><p>Yennefer seems to appreciate the sentiment, though still she narrows her eyes at them both. “And I’m going to be <em>included </em>this time?” she demands, and Jaskier smiles brightly.</p><p>“Of course! Not that you weren’t included before, really. Just… Geralt was proposing to <em>me</em>, not you. There aren’t a lot of ways you <em>could </em>have been included.”</p><p>Yennefer harrumphs. This has already been pointed out to her, and cast aside as ‘not a good enough reason, <em>Geralt</em>.’ “So long as you remember.”</p><p>“Yennefer,” Jaskier says, voice now terribly serious, before he struggles to his feet and sways drunkenly over to the witch, collapsing into her lap with his arms about her neck and his face nuzzled into her hair. “Yennefer. Of course you’ll be there.”</p><p>The sorceress accepts his weight with a grumble, though she shifts herself to accommodate him and loops her arms about his waist automatically.</p><p>“Yennefer,” he whines, pressing his lips to her temple, looking over her head at Geralt who smiles indulgently at the both of them.</p><p>“Jaskier,” she bumps her head against his.</p><p>“Yennefer—will you marry us? I mean… the ceremony, will you perform it?” he keeps his lips where they are, brushing against her temple, and murmurs his request, low. Her hand on his waist squeezes, hard.</p><p>It’s a split-second decision, but Jaskier tastes the <em>rightness </em>of them on his tongue and knows that neither he nor Geralt could have it any other way. The witcher has heard him despite his low tone, what with his augmented senses, and silence settles over the room as Yennefer forces her drink-addled mind to comprehend what he has just requested.</p><p>She darts a look over at Geralt, who smiles softly at her. Jaskier wonders for a brief half-moment what the two of them must have been like, when they were together.</p><p>She turns to look at him, and presses her forehead against his, and whispers, unsteadily but still very sure of herself, “<em>yes</em>.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Yennefer promises, too, to look into what laws there are surrounding the possession of magical creatures, though she cannot promise much.</p><p>“It’s not like very many people see them as anything other than <em>menaces</em>,” she grouches, eyeing the books she has shelved. She’s rearranging them again, and has dragged Jaskier into assisting her; he has a steadily-growing armful of books and numb hands. “And even those that aren’t—weren’t; unicorns and the like, were driven to extinction decades ago. Humans fear anything they see as <em>other</em>.”</p><p>“I know, Yen—believe me I know. It isn’t even as though slavery for <em>humans </em>is outlawed. It’s just…”</p><p>“You weren’t a slave, you were a pet,” she murmurs, running her finger over book spines and chewing on her lip in deliberation. She misses his flinch.</p><p>“There should be <em>something</em>,” he professes, and she nods in agreement, taking a book out of his arms and replacing it with a further three.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Yennefer bids them good luck when they leave her, two weeks later, a list of nobles and a map of where they’ll go next firmly in hand.</p><p>“I’ll speak to a few sorcerers I know, see if there’s anything that can be done for official protection of magical creatures. There’re no official laws, but… well. I can’t promise anything,” she adds nervously, and Jaskier offers an encouraging smile.</p><p>“It’s more than I—than we—could ever have hoped for, Yennefer. Thank you.”</p><p>She waves them off, standing stark against the vampire’s den she has cleared for herself, and waits there until they have vanished over the horizon.</p><p>~~~</p><p>The first nobleman Geralt kills curses and spits and dies badly. The second goes more quietly, and after that Geralt stops noticing.</p><p>Jaskier cuts through them with relish, plastering himself with gore and viscera and dripping entrails as he walks. Geralt picks a length of intestine from his hair when the siren approaches, his eyes silver and mirrored and narrowed as he scents the witcher, half-feral still.</p><p>“Alright?” Geralt asks, lips curved in a smile, and the siren gnashes his teeth, looking around. If he were a cat, he’d be lashing his tail.</p><p>The manor house they’d ransacked lies brittle and bloody as they make their way back through it, marking each doorway, each bolted window, ensuring they have not missed even a single crevice.</p><p>In one of the bedrooms, they find a banshee. Her voice is gone. Jaskier approaches her, and she reaches automatically for her breeches, smiling up at him with dead eyes.</p><p>“Can you talk?” he asks, moving her hands away as gently as he can, despite her persistence.</p><p>She looks momentarily terrified—terrified of displeasing him, he realises, and he sighs. “Geralt?” he calls.</p><p>One swing of a silver sword is all it takes.</p><p>She chokes silently, her mouth gaping as her head rolls and blood pours like water from her neck.</p><p>“Was she the only one?” the witcher turns to him, and Jaskier manages a jerky nod of the head.</p><p>They leave the manor house saturated with blood, and turn their horses left, to the river. They aren’t sure what the response will be to men of nobility being so savagely slaughtered—only that they don’t want to be anywhere near here when it comes, and so they mask their scents in the river and plan their next steps.</p><p>“We’ll move north,” Geralt muses, knowing that Jaskier is still half-creature and won’t reply, but understands what he is saying nonetheless. “There’s a whole cluster of family names ‘need wiping out—if we hit them hard and fast, one after the other, we can probably do it all in a week.”</p><p>Jaskier chuffs, before letting out a little musical whine that Geralt interprets as <em>agreement</em>. He reins Roach in, holding her so that Pegasus might come alongside, the placid gelding barely registering the stroppy mare who leans over an nips him ill-naturedly on the shoulder. He eyes the siren, taking note of the blood that coats him still, turning his silver-blue scales the colour of rust.</p><p>He looks a wild thing. Absently, Geralt muses that, had he met the siren while he looked like this—fresh from a hunt, bristling with belligerence, coated with the blood of foes he had hunted down and slaughtered gleefully—he likely would have drawn his silver sword without a second thought.</p><p>He’d always thought he had an abundance of mercy for the creatures he was often sent to kill. He remembers all their faces—all those he had killed, and those that he hadn’t. He wonders when his thinking had shifted to see the creatures as those he ought to protect, and humans as the enemy.</p><p>Not that <em>all </em>humans are the enemy, he reminds himself, as they pass through villages and hamlets and towns and cities alike, meeting people who have never had to think about monsters being kidnapped and forced into slavery. They are ignorant, not malicious.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They spend a month gathering coin, with Jaskier chasing festivals and celebrations to find packed taverns and patrons with heavy coinpurses, and Geralt chases monsters, returning to his siren with his earnings.</p><p>One day, Geralt is offered a… more unusual job.</p><p>“There is a creature, a monster, hunting down noble families and slaughtering them in their homes,” the Lady Telya and her husband, standing submissively beside her, frown. “There are… certain connections they all share. That <em>we </em>share,” she adds; Geralt knows this, because her and her husband- and her children’s names are on his list. “We think this monster is going to come after us next.”</p><p>Beside him, Jaskier stands absolutely immobile, very determinedly not reacting.</p><p>“I see,” Geralt says, unperturbed. “What proof do you have? What connections are these?”</p><p>Lady Telya looks shocked. “I was not aware you needed any such <em>proof</em>,” she retorts, her voice sharp and cutting. Defensive.</p><p>Geralt hums. “Should have done more research.”</p><p>Furious, she dismisses him, citing that she ‘needs time’ to collect the evidence he’d requested. Happily, Geralt leaves, discretely catching Jaskier by the wrist and pulling him along, careful to keep his face blank and not thunderously furious as he stalks out of the hall.</p><p>“So—”</p><p>“Yes, Jaskier.”</p><p>“—she’s hiring you—”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>, Jaskier.”</p><p>“—as protection… against yourself?”</p><p>“<em>Yes, Jaskier.</em>”</p><p>“Has that ever happened before?” the siren sounds terribly pleased with the situation, more so than Geralt likes to hear.</p><p>“Not to me,” he grumbles. By now they have reached the horses, pulling them away from their hay despite the snorts of displeasure and readying their tack for mounting. Geralt waits to make sure Jaskier pulls himself aboard before climbing into his own saddle.</p><p>“How much will she pay?” Jaskier asks, bare minutes later, as they are trotting down the trail towards the woods where they’ll lay their camp for tonight.</p><p>Geralt frowns. “I’m not taking the job, Jaskier,” he says firmly.</p><p>Jaskier pulls Pegasus into a halt. Cautiously, Geralt follows suit, turning Roach so he can look at the siren for the conversation they are about to half. He scratches at her withers, more to reassure himself than her; he’d always known that the siren’s newfound bloodlust would catch up with them both—just not that it would be like this.</p><p>“Geralt,” Jaskier begins, his voice queer. “Why not?”</p><p>He sighs, and begins to explain. “I’m not going to rob her before I murder her, Jaskier,” he says carefully. “We’ve not taken coin nor valuables from any of the nobility we’ve hit before now, and I’m not going to start with this one simply because my services have been requested.”</p><p>Jaskier looks blank. Geralt knows that it is merely him masking a vitriolic fury that <em>burns </em>through his veins, and that he is being very, very careful about what words he uses with his friend, his love. “That’s—there’s no room for <em>morals </em>in this, Geralt. Not when they are <em>systematically hunting and enslaving </em>my kind, and anyone else they can get away with!”</p><p>Geralt nods. Jaskier isn’t wrong. “And when we’re done with these nobility,” he says, measured, “do we take this mandate—to kill those who have caused such horror, such distress—and apply it to others? How about those who enslave people from the east? Or corrupt kings, or mad sorcerers—like Stregobor, and Wren—” Jaskier flinches at the name.</p><p>“—or perhaps even every tax collector or merchant or tradesman who built an entire system upon exploiting those who cannot drag themselves out of the situation life has dealt them? Everywhere we go, there are people who are suffering, and we cannot do anything to help them because once we begin there is no stopping. Who are we to decide who must live, and who must die?”</p><p>“We’ve been doing that for <em>months</em>, Geralt,” Jaskier says quietly. Geralt shakes his head.</p><p>“This is a personal vendetta, Jaskier—do not twist it into something more, because it <em>can’t </em>be. I can’t let it be.”</p><p>Jaskier looks up, and away, to some distant horizon, and Geralt wonders what he is seeing there. Where his mind is.</p><p>“You—you can’t know what it was like,” the siren finally says, voice pitched low and terrible. “They broke me down so systematically, Geralt, that—they gave me a new <em>name</em>. And I accepted it. For years! And when I got out—it was a move, a political manoeuvre, and I was just another pawn in their game, <em>still</em>—and to them it was just politics, a tiny affectation of the chessboard, but to me it was my <em>whole life</em>.” He breaks off, chest heaving with emotion.</p><p>Geralt realises that he, too, is breathing hard; he so wants to lean over, to take Jaskier’s hand in his and reassure them both, but this is something they need to talk about, else it will sit and fester between them, and eventually they will both hate the other for it.</p><p>He cannot allow that to happen.</p><p>It is a little pain now, to save them both a lifetime of suffering at the other’s hands.</p><p>“I couldn’t even use my real name,” Jaskier’s voice is suddenly stronger, harder. As though he has pulled himself together. “When I got out—I couldn’t use <em>Julian</em>—” his voice cracks on the word, “—any more, I had to pick something else. But… the name that I was born with, I couldn’t use that, either. I had to pick something new. And it took… days, and weeks, and months and years, for me to get used to it again. To unlearn all the pain and the fear and the madness that they had taught me in that <em>fucking </em>place.”</p><p>“And you did,” Geralt manages to get out, voice low and cautious still. Jaskier obviously is going somewhere with this.</p><p>“And now here I am, taking my revenge, <em>finally</em>, saving my brothers and sisters in chains, freeing them—be it back to their lives, or so that none may hurt them ever again. Here I am, and—”</p><p>“And I’m making a mountain out of nothing,” Geralt finishes the sentence, terribly sad. Jaskier nods miserably. “Jaskier… I have to draw the line somewhere,” he says, and the siren flashes him—this <em>awful</em>, absolutely shattered look, like Geralt has just torn his heart from his chest and split it into a hundred pieces, and Geralt feels his own heart clench in sympathy.</p><p>“And I’m the line?” Jaskier whispers, and Geralt bites back a curse. <em>Fuck</em>. That’s not what he meant at all.</p><p>“No,” he says forcefully, shaking his head. “Not at all. You’re—Jaskier, you’re <em>not my line</em>. I would burn the world to get you back. Fuck what anybody else says. But this… you’re safe, and loved, and I’m doing this <em>for you</em>… but I won’t go too far. I can’t risk it. Witchers are seen as monsters still, and though nobody has connected me to this… it would be too easy, if I were to take her coin. They’d have me put down. It’s happened before.”</p><p>Jaskier swallows, and closes his eyes, and Geralt feels his heart break again at the tears that track down his cheeks, silvery and nearly invisible under the overcast sky.</p><p>“Come, then,” the siren says finally, and Geralt’s stomach twists at the displeasure that Jaskier is so obviously trying to hide, but… it’s up to him. He can’t force the words from his siren’s mouth, anymore than Jaskier can force him to compromise his morals, and so he has to let this lie.</p><p>~~~</p><p>That night, under the cover of darkness, so utterly caliginous that even with the witcher permutations, Geralt cannot see through it, Jaskier begins to talk.</p><p>“I’m sorry, for earlier,” he says first, and when Geralt wraps a palm around the back of his neck and tries to dismiss him gently, Jaskier pulls away. “I need to say this.”</p><p>“Alright.</p><p>“Earlier… I acted like I’m the only one of us who’s ever suffered. But you… <em>every day</em>, and every time you take a mission, and even—when you were a boy. Your witcher trials. You—” he breaks off, and Geralt holds him close.</p><p>“I’m alright,” he reassures, even though he knows… that’s not why Jaskier is upset. That isn’t the problem here.</p><p>“It’s just… so much. All of it. All the pain and the death. Why can’t people just be <em>kind </em>to each other?”</p><p>Geralt doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t have an answer, and he’s never been good at meaningless platitudes.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Geralt doesn’t take the job as protection against himself. He takes a week, killing the others on his list, slipping into their homes and spilling blood over their sheets, leaving their valuables where they lie but hanging their lives on his belt with grim determination, and then he goes for Lady Telya and her husband.</p><p>The creatures they find are more easily hidden; part fae, or hybrids, whom he sends on to the Sisters of Melitele or sorceresses he knows can help.</p><p>Jaskier is quiet—more subdued, less likely to outbursts of impromptu song and dance—and Geralt keeps a worried eye on him for the next few days, and finally, Jaskier speaks up.</p><p>“There’s a grave I need to visit,” he says, quietly, and Geralt doesn’t question him—just packs their things up, and points Roach to follow Pegasus.</p><p>He notes the direction. He thinks he knows where this road ends—not who lies under the gravestone they are headed for, but he knows what stood nearby, and he worries.</p><p>It takes them two weeks. Jaskier grows quieter each day. Geralt can see something weighing him down, see his shoulders growing stiffer and lower under the burden he places upon himself, see the ghosts that cause his eyes to wander and grow hazy, unfixed, as he stares off into the distance, remembering.</p><p>The gravestone is beautiful.</p><p>‘<em>Dawid’</em>, it reads, with a family name that causes him to shudder and clench his fists.</p><p>Jaskier is crouched before it on the hard-packed ground, a single rose placed before him, atop the tomb stone. He has his arms wrapped around his knees, hugging them to his chest. He stares, unseeing, at the ground between his feet.</p><p>Geralt is patient; he waits, and waits, for Jaskier to say something—and after an hour, he finally talks, figuring that the sun will begin to set soon and the chill in the air will begin to affect the siren, reaching right down to his bones, and neither of them wants a grouchy, frozen siren. So he speaks.</p><p>“Jaskier,” he says, first, and the siren twitches in response. Geralt sits down, wincing as old bones creak in protest of moving after more than an hour of standing still, and he settles next to the siren—not touching him. Just <em>there. </em>“Who was he?”</p><p>“He was—one of the first people to show me kindness, in that fucking prison. I loved him. He couldn’t save me… but I loved him.”</p><p>Geralt nods, unsure as to how far he can go, what he can say, but he feels like he has to say <em>something. </em>So he does. “Tell me about him,” he asks, his voice as gentle as he can make it, and Jaskier finally sighs and falls properly to the ground, curling up next to Geralt with his head on the witcher’s shoulder, taking his hand and gripping it tightly.</p><p>“He liked my music,” Jaskier smiles faintly. “He gave me my lute. Taught me how to play. Taught me this language, taught me… so many things. About being human. Even in that pit of fucking vipers… he gave me hope.” He speaks more—speaks of all the things you learn about when you love somebody, all the little things, all the things Jaskier thought he had forgotten until now.</p><p>It’s cathartic, to speak of it. To talk about him to somebody else.</p><p>“It wasn’t healthy,” Jaskier admits, finally. Sunset has fallen, and the air is brisk. “What we had… I was a prisoner! He was—technically—one of my captors! But… well, he kept me sane. I was broken, but he didn’t let me fall apart.”</p><p>“And you loved him,” Geralt murmurs. They are the first words he’s said in a while. “And after everything… he’s gone, Jaskier. Just remembered that you loved him.”</p><p>Jaskier nods against his shoulder, sniffles somewhat—Geralt isn’t sure when the tears started, only that neither of them had acknowledged it.</p><p>“We should go,” the siren says finally.</p><p>“You done?”</p><p>“…Yeah.”</p><p>So they stand, hands still clasped, and walk together to their steeds; the ride back to camp is quiet, and, silently, Geralt lies atop Jaskier when they bed down for the night, pressing against him, reminding him <em>he’s there</em>. He’ll always be there.</p><p>~~~</p><p>And as Geralt is there for Jaskier, so Jaskier is there for Geralt.</p><p>“Okay. What is it?” Jaskier stands before Geralt, hands on his hips, looking cross.</p><p>Geralt looks blankly at him. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“Your—” Jaskier waves a hand, not really pointing at anything and still somehow encompassing all of Geralt in his indication, “—this. You’re not right, Geralt. There’s something going on. You never <em>smile </em>anymore.”</p><p>“I don’t smile,” Geralt grows, hunching down over the small fire he is trying to get started, blowing at the base of it. The embers snap and brighten for half a moment, and another twig catches light. He sits back.</p><p>“That’s a load of shit and you know it. You smile, Geralt, I’ve <em>seen </em>you do it. Tell me what’s wrong,” Jaskier demands, sitting down on the opposite side of the fire and staring at Geralt beseechingly. Wisely, the witcher avoids his gaze.</p><p>“Are you bored? Is that it? We can go somewhere else,” Jaskier continues. “Could go find a lovely tall mountain and some griffons for you to befriend, probably. Or I will. I’ve always wanted to see a griffon—I bet they make great pets,” he rambles, growing increasingly worried—by this point Geralt has usually cut him off. “Or maybe we can go find an ocean and you can take your grievances out on a horde of drowners. Or perhaps—”</p><p>“It’s the killing,” Geralt says quietly, and does not elaborate. Jaskier frowns.</p><p>“Killing?” he asks, “—of what? Is it the human killings? Because, Geralt—”</p><p>“Not the humans,” Geralt sighs. “The… the creatures. The ones we can’t save.”</p><p>Jaskier falls silent following Geralt’s confession. <em>This </em>he hadn’t expected… though perhaps he should have seen it coming. If anybody could carry guilt over such acts of mercy, it would be Geralt.</p><p>He’s getting the feeling that there is nothing he can say here that will help. No consolations, no suggestions, no platitudes that spring to mind that might soothe the witcher.</p><p>“It’s alright,” he says instead. “This will pass.” Because it <em>will</em>, he knows; Geralt is generally too amicable to allow these things to affect him for very long. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t affecting him <em>now</em>. “I’ll have a bath drawn for you; go rid yourself of those clothes so they can be washed, and let’s clean you off as well.”</p><p>“Jaskier—”</p><p>“No,” Jaskier interrupts him before he can continue, “you’re letting me take care of you. Now, chop chop—I’ll find a servant.”</p><p>The tavern has few washrooms but with a flash of silver and a low reminder of exactly <em>who </em>the bath is for, Jaskier manages to secure a wooden tub filled with steaming water for an hour or two, and guides Geralt into it with far more care than he ordinarily does.</p><p>He settles in behind the witcher to unpick the knots from his mane. “Do you suppose…” he begins, and Geralt sighs through his nose and tilts his head back, pushing into Jaskier’s hands, relaxing into the routineness of being carefully washed by the siren.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier takes care, afterwards, to watch Geralt for small signs that he’s… slipping, for want of a better word. He sings silly songs to Roach and braids flowers into her mane, and when the flowers are still there in the evening and Geralt only <em>hmms</em> disinterestedly at his song, Jaskier knows to take out the special scented oils that Geralt has professed a liking for, to rub the tension and the despair out of his love’s muscles, to hold the witcher especially close at night.</p><p> If they are in a town, he will take care to bring Geralt some small token of affection; oil for his blades, if he has noticed that Geralt is running low; he brings sweet foods from market stalls and bakeries when he can; he takes over cooking duties and makes sure the witcher’s shirts are mended and he does what he can to sort through Geralt’s potions.</p><p>There are periods where Geralt is as fierce and bright and balanced as he has always been.</p><p>And there are times where Geralt seems to sink into himself; there is never any definable trigger, only that he simply <em>is</em>: one morning he will wake up and the world will be painted in shades of grey, and Jaskier is there to help him see the beauty in the world still.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Jaskier does, eventually, manage to drag Geralt into the sea.</p><p>The witcher <em>hates </em>it. It’s like dropping a cat into a bathtub, and watching the creature freeze, ears flattened painfully to their skull, before yowling and doing everything in their power to <em>get out</em>.</p><p>Geralt isn’t quite so bad as that—he swims powerfully out, Jaskier spinning beneath him, making a nuisance of himself as his fins flare out and his tail lashes the water.</p><p>And then Geralt stops, and looks down, and—its <em>black</em>.</p><p><em>There could be anything down there</em>.</p><p>And he freezes, because his instincts have gone haywire, and he’s listening as ardently as he can for monsters, coming to get him, while trying still to dismiss the sound of the waves and the wind, racing over the flat ocean, tearing about him like a thing possessed.</p><p>Jaskier pops up before him, and Geralt reaches for him—to attack, or to balance himself, he isn’t sure, but the siren grabs him <em>back </em>and he finds himself grounded, suddenly, somehow. They’re in the middle of the ocean. There <em>isn’t </em>any ground.</p><p>“Breathe—Geralt, c’mon, it’s not that bad,” Jaskier bites back a laugh, Geralt can tell, and he glares at him, unimpressed. His heart rate had picked up ever so slightly in his moment of panic, and it settles again now—but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still seething.</p><p>“I hate this,” he complains.</p><p>“I know,” Jaskier nods, reaching forward to brush wet strands of hair out of Geralt’s face, “but just think—you’ve done it, now. You don’t have to do it ever again if you don’t want.”</p><p>“It’s just…there could be <em>anything </em>down there,” he grits out, flexing his fingers against Jaskier’s forearms, where he holds them tightly. The siren doesn’t seem to mind. He kicks his legs beneath him, keeping himself afloat, though he suspects Jaskier could support the two of them without much effort.</p><p>“Oh, there’s all sorts,” Jaskier says conversationally. “Most of them you could handle on your own, even without your swords. But they won’t come here anyway; sirens are the natural predator of most of them, so they’ll stay away.”</p><p>“Hm,” Geralt hums.</p><p>Jaskier smiles, delighted. “<em>I’m </em>protecting <em>you</em>, now! Oh, this would make a good song. The siren and his witcher.”</p><p>Geralt glares at him. “Can we go back, now? And don’t you <em>dare </em>write any songs about this.”</p><p>“Of course, of course. We can go back. I’m still writing a song.”</p><p>Jaskier just laughs at the murderous expression Geralt levels at him, and swipes his webbed hand through the water at Geralt, forcing a wave over the witcher’s head that has him spluttering and cursing as he dives below the surface, making to chase Jaskier all the way back to the coast.</p><p>~~~</p><p>It’s… three years, or perhaps four years, later, when it all changes.</p><p>“You’re fucking kidding me,” Jaskier breathes, looking at the array of warriors standing before them, weapons readied.</p><p>“You’re—” one of them starts.</p><p>“—the witcher?” another finishes, brows furrowed.</p><p>A third zeroes in on Jaskier. “…and his siren?”</p><p>“I think somebody had better start explaining,” Geralt says neutrally, pointedly not sheathing his sword—and yet also not raising it.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They’re a ragged band, make no mistake. Two humans—which Geralt confirms with a single, cautious sniff—present themselves as former members of those hated catch and tag teams, who had scattered like dust before a storm when they’d heard Geralt and Jaskier were coming for them—and then had gone a step further; they’d found others, with a misplaced sense of loyalty and a thirst for killing still, and had gone after their own contacts among the nobility, and then after more names they were given, and more, and more.</p><p>“There’s a whole network of us, now,” one of them stammers out, quailing under Geralt’s hard stare and the sight of Jaskier’s serrated teeth. “Dozens, scores, maybe hundreds.”</p><p>“How have we not come across these people before?” Jaskier murmurs to Geralt in an undertone, taking advantage of the witcher’s sharpened senses to speak more quietly than most humans can hear.</p><p>“We’ve never been this far north,” the witcher whispers back, with a quiet little twitch of his shoulders that Jaskier interprets as a shrug. “Or it could be that they’ve been staying out of our way.”</p><p>“We thought they were just packing up and disappearing,” Jaskier muses, referencing the families of nobility that seemed to have merely vanished over the past several years, while Geralt and he have been hunting. They’d thought the amoral bastards had decided to just <em>run</em>—east, to somewhere like Zerrikania, or perhaps across the sea entirely.</p><p>They hadn’t imagined that they’d been hunted down by somebody other than <em>them</em>.</p><p>“This network,” Geralt says quietly, “how widespread is it?”</p><p>“We’ve got those sympathetic with us all over the continent, north and south,” a second man speaks us. “But the ones who’ve been killing… we started up north, at the dragon mountains, and worked us’ way down. Figured we’d hit the two of you eventually. And… well, here we are.”</p><p>“We’re done?” Jaskier breathes, his voice tight and sharp and only for Geralt’s hearing. The witcher twitches his head in a shake.</p><p>“And what now?” he growls out. The men before him pale. “Will you go back to your lives? Satisfied you’ve <em>repented </em>yourselves?”</p><p>“N—no!” the first man yelps, but the second places a calming hand on his shoulder and faces Geralt with a lot more balls than Jaskier had originally given him credit for.</p><p>“We’ll keep an eye on it,” he says calmly. “We know the names, know the connections, know what to look for if they start recruiting men to steal creatures again. We know the patterns. And we’ll spend the rest of our lives making up for it, I’m sure.”</p><p>Geralt regards them both with steel in his gaze, and the first shakes in his boots, but the second—the second stands tall, meets his gaze, and Geralt finds himself impressed. Finds himself considering this. Finds himself almost believing him.</p><p>Jaskier slips a hand around his wrist and squeezes, gently. “Geralt,” he says quietly, and the two men strain to listen to what the siren is whispering. “Geralt… maybe this is it.”</p><p>“You want to stop?” the witcher turns and raises a brow, and this—Jaskier thinks that this could really be the end of it. Geralt will go with him, whatever he decides—as he’s said before, and then time and time again thereafter: this is Jaskier’s vendetta, and he’ll follow him wherever he decides to go.</p><p>At a point—perhaps even a year ago, now, but likely not so early as that—the killing had stopped being such catharsis, had stopped being so satisfying, and had become more of… a chore.</p><p>And now that Jaskier thinks about it, he wonders if he really wants to spend another three or four or five years simply <em>killing</em>, because it has become habit.</p><p>That isn’t who he is. He looks at Geralt, and knows that the witcher has already seen his decision in his eyes, and he—approves.</p><p>So he takes a breath, and turns back to the humans stood before him, and smiles toothily.</p><p>“If I <em>ever</em>,” he emphasises, and they gulp, “hear that monsters such as myself have been disappearing mysteriously, only to reappear as the pet of some rich fuck who likes to parade his pets around, then <em>you two </em>will be the first that I hunt down.”</p><p>“Aye, I reckon we will be,” the second man dips his head; the first man apparently cannot talk, frozen by fright. “We’ll say goodday to you, witcher, siren.”</p><p>And that’s that.</p><p>Roach and Pegasus are dozing when they find them again, and seem surprised to see their riders so soon after being dismounted; nonetheless, there is a spring in their step as they move off, and Jaskier feels as though his own weight has been lifted.</p><p>“I can’t fucking believe it,” he says. It isn’t exactly what he had been aiming for, but… it serves. Geralt snorts.</p><p>“We had to finish this sometime,” the witcher says placidly. “At least we know there’s somebody else invested in this.”</p><p>“How do you think Yennefer fares, with the Chapter?”</p><p>“I think they’ll be arguing about it for twenty years, but I imagine she’ll wrangle something into place. She’s too stubborn for anything else.”</p><p>Jaskier smiles, and then laughs when Geralt looks over and offers a small, soft smile of his own.</p><p>“Where now, then?” he asks.</p><p>“Hmm,” Geralt hums.</p><p>“Geralt. I know you’ve got an idea. That’s your <em>ideas </em>hum.”</p><p>“It is not,” the witcher protests.</p><p>“Is too.”</p><p>“Is not!”</p><p>“Geralt! I’m right, so stop arguing.”</p><p>“Marry me.”</p><p>That draws Jaskier up short. “…I’ve already agreed to marry you,” he says, twisting the ring on his finger as he often does when nervous or thinking hard.</p><p>“I know,” Geralt smiles, “so let’s get married.”</p><p>“You mean—”</p><p>“—yes.”</p><p>“Oh, fuck,” Jaskier breathes, because suddenly—</p><p>--the future is real, and it’s <em>here</em>. Everything he had been working for—the life he wanted to build with Geralt, it’s suddenly only moments away and it’s—</p><p>He’s—</p><p>“Okay,” he says then. “Let’s find Yennefer. Let’s do it.”</p><p>~~~</p><p>Their wedding is a simple affair.</p><p>They stand ankle-deep in the shallows of the sea, the surf rushing over their bare feet. Jaskier <em>glitters </em>in the sun, his scales having been cleaned and polished and buffed, the grit wiped away and the ugly blemishes of his scars proudly displayed under the wisp-thin silken shirt he wears.</p><p>Yennefer stands before the two of them, unable to keep the grin from her face, nor the tears from her eyes.</p><p>Words are said and vows are made and Geralt doesn’t hear them—the waves roll onto the beach around him and the wind whispers in his ears, and his voice is rasping and silent to him, and he’s lost, lost in his head, until Jaskier takes his hand and pushes a ring onto his finger and Geralt gives him one in return, and a kiss seals them together.</p><p>They consummate on the beach, and then again in the sea, and the both of them are bitten and bloodied and the salt water stings their wounds, but it is <em>oh so worth it</em>, as Geralt carries Jaskier bridal-style to the camp they have set up amongst the sand dunes.</p><p>The next day they travel into the city of Oxenfurt, as close as it is, and celebrate the summer’s day. Jaskier slips away to make enquiries at the university, and Geralt pretends that he hadn’t known where the siren had been when he returns, jubilant, later. Jaskier doesn’t expound on what he learnt but Geralt guesses that it was all good news regardless: the siren is in too good a mood, dancing as he is, for it to be anything otherwise.</p><p>Geralt has never felt this sense of being <em>claimed </em>before. He enjoys the way men- and women’s eyes rake down himself and Jaskier, only to stop when they reach the matching bands on their ring fingers and then flick away, embarrassed. It is terribly gratifying.</p><p>~~~</p><p>They move on, and find more places to explore.</p><p>The waves crash against the cliff rocks, dozens of feet below. Geralt holds Jaskier tightly against his side, their hands clasped. The ring is a heavy weight on his finger, and Geralt can feel the rapid beat of Jaskier’s pulse in his wrist, pressed against his own: <em>my love, my love, my love</em>.</p><p>Jaskier rests his head against Geralt’s shoulder.</p><p>“Did Yennefer tell you? About Tisseia de Vries? The Brotherhood—”</p><p>“—are trying to track down the nobility who slipped away, yeah. We talked.”</p><p>Geralt unclasps his hand, and lifts it to card through Jaskier’s hair. The siren purrs under his attention.</p><p>Far out to sea, Geralt feels eyes on them both. Eyes he recognises. He knows Jaskier has noticed them too; both of them pretend not to have noticed.</p><p>“Where now, then, witcher?” Jaskier finally asks, his wanderlust tugging at him to go.</p><p>Geralt’s lips lift in a little half-smile. “Anywhere, love,” he hums. “Anywhere at all.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>and that's it folks! all done! hope i didn't forget anything. ill see you on the next one ;) </p><p>also, please everyone stay safe with this virus going around. I know things are frightening and uncertain--i myself am quarantining myself at work for the next month so that i can stay to look after the horses--but please be sure to fact check things for yourselves and try not to fall for the scaremongering tactics the news sources like to employ so as to draw in more readers. things aren't as bad as they seem. good luck everyone, and stay safe!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hit me up on tumblr at redkelpie!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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